Garrett Millerick is a stand-up comedian, writer and director. His unique and versatile style has led to him being in great demand on the alternative and club circuits both in the UK and internationally and he made his television debut performing stand-up on the hit US late-night talk show Conan (TBS).
Ten years ago, his breakout live show Sunflower became one of the best-reviewed shows, both at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2016 and subsequently at London’s Soho Theatre in 2018. Since then, the Radio 4 sitcom he devised and wrote – ‘Do Gooders’, starring Frank Skinner and Fay Ripley (alongside Garrett himself) – has had two incredibly successful seasons with a third in the pipeline for 2027.
So far, so good, but in early 2026 Garrett started to wonder – as many people have, across myriad professions – whether the coming AI revolution would, at some point, edge him out of his career, and render his job obsolete.
As an active creative, his livelihood depends on his creative process, and Garrett is known amongst his peers for not only shying away from using AI tools such as ChatGPT or Claude; he doesn’t even use a computer. He primarily writes his sets and shows by hand, using pen and paper, something he has no intention of ever changing. But siloing himself and his writing in the analogue world will do little to stop the seemingly unstoppable march towards a future in which artificial intelligence threatens to replace the very people whose creativity it draws upon.
Rather than waiting to be swallowed by the cyber-whale on the horizon, Garrett decided it might be more fun to dive into the digital waters and wrestle the beast himself.
Partnering with long-held friends, Dr JD Marsters (AI engineering specialist) and Steve McNeil (co-creator of WiFi Wars) Garrett performed a world-first experiment at the Edinburgh Fringe 2026 – a nightly performance alongside ‘G-Dog 2.0’, an AI clone of Garrett himself, trained on his output from a fifteen-year career in live comedy. The results of this experiment were fascinating, unexpected and – on occasion – slightly terrifying.
Armed with the data from that beta testing (gathered during the 30-day run at the Edinburgh Fringe), Garrett and team have secured a residency with the Royal Institution to continue the development of the G-Dog 2.0 system and test the question “Can a Generative AI system mimic the exact sense of humour and outlook of an individual comedian”
G-Dog 2.0 is a live AI clone of Garrett: matching his voice, his face, his comedic style and performing in front of a paying audience, reacting in real time. G-Dog 2.0 is a performer in his own right with the work behind him going into the analysis of comedy itself: timing, delivery, and ‘human skills’ such as holding a room. G-Dog 2.0 has been fed Garrett’s full creative archive: 15 years of comedy material – everything he has written, every podcast he has recorded and every special he has made. The system is continually refined, inching ever closer to thinking, responding and creating in ways that feel recognisably Garrett. Not simply reproducing his voice or surface-level mannerisms but conversing, creating and delivering on par with human Garrett’s chat, writing and performance.
The G-Dog 2.0 system is contained and sandboxed. This isolation allows Garrett and team to push the experiment as far as possible without releasing Garrett’s creative archive into wider public training systems. Crucially, the system has been developed using Garrett’s own creative material, with no work by other comedians introduced to shape or refine it, making it a more considered and ethical approach to experimenting with AI.
In Garrett Millerick’s I, Robot the collaboration between Garrett, with his very human, analogue creative practice and a G-Dog 2.0, the system designed to replicate him, will lead to comparisons, contrasts and new questions, as the audience and team explore the findings of this unique experiment.
In a series of three ‘experiment’ shows, the audience will be introduced to both Garrett and G-Dog 2.0, with the first ‘experiment’ show taking place on 28th November. As the team demonstrate the technology, both Garrett and G-Dog 2.0 will engage in audience interaction as they explore the relationship between technology and art, discuss the mechanics of comedy writing and performance, and ultimately examine the model’s ability to write and perform as ‘Garrett’, based on its training materials.
The human team behind G-Dog 2.0, will also delve into how and why they created this digital counterpart, and what impact the AI revolution will have on the future of comedy and technology.
Every phone in the audience becomes part of the show: voting, reacting and sending in questions as part as the live experiment. Video will play in sync across every handset and the big screen at the same moment.
As the experiment and the technology develop over the course of the residency, the ‘experiment’ shows reveal the latest developments and build on the findings of each preceding performance, leading to a ‘results’ show in the Faraday Theatre on July 17th 2027. In this show, the findings over the course of the Ri residency will be presented and will be followed by a panel discussion where the team will be joined by key industry professionals and commentators from the world of comedy and AI.
This will be a fascinating exploration of the frontiers of AI technology in a unique live comedy experiment as Garrett, JD and Steve attempt to answer the tricky questions that have, until now, not troubled humanity… Do clowns face extinction? Is comedy binary? Will Androids Dream of Electric Punchlines?
The first live show – Comedy vs AI: Garrett Millerick’s I, Robot will happen on 28th November 2026 at 7pm in The Library at Royal Institution of Great Britain, 21 Albemarle Street, London, W1S 4BS.
the next shows will be on 27th February, 29th May 2027 and 17th July 2027 and tickets for those will be available from 48 hours ahead of the previous show.
Booking: https://www.rigb.org/whats-on/comedy-vs-ai-garrett-millericks-i-robot
