The Models is an interactive installation exploring the improvisational nature of generative AI, and its sometimes unexpected and nonsensical character. The installation is powered by a 3D simulation running on a video game engine and depicting a year worth of theatrical scenes improvised in a style and by a cast inspired by Italian Commedia dell'Arte. The installation features dialogues generated by a system of AI models impersonating traditionally servile, lying or antagonistic Commedia masks (Arlecchino, Balanzone, Brighella, Colombina, Pantalone and Pulcinella) and improvising around a set of controversial props that symbolise superstition, folklore, and popular falsehoods.

Twenty-eight thousand scenes exist, with bespoke lighting design and music composed by Hero Image. Each scene is staged in response to the audience’s casting and scenographic preferences as expressed through their phone, and the models’ output is unpredictable, influenced both by the prompted scene and by literature found in their training dataset - a 'memory' of recurring commedia archetypes that both models and audiences share, and which provides the foundation and space for improvisation, confabulation, mistakes, jokes and surprise. The text and voice generation system was assembled by the artists using the Leonardo Supercomputer, during a residency supported by Ars Electronica and Sineglossa.