Molière Ex Machina: AI used to create ‘new work’ by beloved French playwright | AI (artificial intelligence)

Molière is to the French what Shakespeare is to the English; The last word in historical literature, drama, humor and satire.

Now, more than 350 years after his death, the 17th-century playwright has been resurrected by scholars at the Sorbonne University in Paris. artificial intelligence was used to help write an experimental play in his own style.

L’Astrologue ou les False Présages (The Astrologer or False Omens), a comedy in three acts, made its debut at the Royal Opera House at the Château de Versailles last week.

The two-hour play tells the story of a wealthy bourgeois Parisian who, under the instructions of a charlatan astrologer named Pseudoramus, insists that his daughter Lucile marry a debt-ridden, elderly wigmaker.

Although the theme was designed by Molière, the dialogue, music, costumes and props were all created with the help of a French AI tool called Le Chat (The Cat).

A group of researchers at the Sorbonne worked for two and a half years on the project called Molière Ex Machina. The team included a group of three artists and researchers called Obously.

The production involved what they described as the “intellectual ping-pong” of approximately 20,000 exchanges between researchers, classical literature scholars, linguists, historians and Le Chat. As the team fed more information to the AI ​​assistant, each resulting word and scene went through multiple rewrites; The researchers explained to the AI ​​assistant why certain passages didn’t work and asked it to try again.

“The process was long and difficult,” said the play’s director, Mickaël Bouffard, president of the Théâtre Molière Sorbonne. He added that the first draft of Le Chat consisted of only eight pages and that they were “not very interesting” and as a result “the scenes had to be revised multiple times”.

“AI has a superpower: the ability to store everything Molière wrote and read,” Bouffard told France Info. “We humans cannot do this.”

The astrology theme and title of the play, which appears in at least one original Molière play, were suggested by artificial intelligence and touch on current concerns about the use of technology. “Astrology allows us to discuss manipulation, false beliefs and disinformation, which are particularly current issues,” said Pierre-Marie Chauvin, an associate professor at the Sorbonne.

Molière, who died in 1673, was so influential that French is often called “Molière’s language.”

Artificial intelligence remains one of the most sensitive topics in the entertainment industry and sparks intense debate. Had the project not been carried out by academic experts at the Théâtre Molière, which specializes in accurately reconstructing 17th-century productions, its use to parody Molière could have sparked outrage in France.

A. report sent Generative AI is “a great opportunity, a stimulating tool and a powerful driver of creativity,” he argued in the national assembly last year. But he also noted that artificial intelligence “poses a threat to many professions in the cultural sector, as it enables the production of content that can directly compete with human creations,” adding: “It is necessary to establish a balance between different forms of creation.”

L’Astrologue strikes that balance, Chauvin said. “We are showing in concrete terms something that can be achieved in a new way with AI. Not a game written by AI, but a game written with it,” he said.

An audience of 100 people, including Minister of Culture Catherine Pégard, watched the play in two performances last week. One audience member later said: “I think it’s a success. The plot is so realistic, the plot is so close to what we’re used to hearing in these movies.” [Molière] playing.”

Another theater goer was less impressed. “A good writer can do this without AI,” he said. “I think we [humans] “It still has a bright future.”

20 Minutes’ technology editor Christophe Séfrin attended one of the two demonstrations. HE explained He called the AI ​​imitation “stunning, almost alarming” and said the dialogue was “entirely believable”.

Magazine telerama he described it as a “mad enterprise” but said that at times the play “seems like a pastiche of the playwright’s work.”

Théâtre Molière Sorbonne and Apparent He plans to stage the play throughout France and take it abroad.