ChatATC
Auckland Theatre Company fires AI box office assistant after 36 hours
On Monday, Auckland Theatre Company introduced the world to Grace.
I was on Instagram when I saw the post — not a new director, actor, or play for their 2025 season. But their new AI-generated “virtual concierge.” Officially named ‘Grace AI’, she/it was joining their box office team and would live 24/7 on their website.
The AI wasn’t on the homepage (outrageous, what would people think), but atc.co.nz/subscribe — like some kind of virtual purgatory.
Her task: help people navigate ATC’s website and programme.
“Grace AI offers insights into our shows, helps our customers navigate subscription options, and provides personalised recommendations for a seamless #wynyardquarter theatre visit.”
Which I can only imagine must be completely indecipherable and in dire need of a virtual avatar with live speech and text capabilities to help anyone navigate them.
Also, if you say ‘she/it’ out loud, you get a reasonably accurate foreshadowing of how the good people of Instagram received Grace.
Part One: Grace
ATC was so proud of its new tool she even made the grid. (You go, girl!)
Grace screamed, “target demographic” and “ethnically ambiguous” and “I look forward to helping you.” I’m sorry Dave, those seats are already taken. She was the perfect new addition to the box office team. No longer would we dummies bumble around the ATC website. Grace, with her superior artificial intelligence, would be the all-powerful cypher to the cryptic crossword that is the ATC 2025 season programme.
A quick aside: I checked Reddit, and there were already two threads about Grace. Here is my favourite comment:
“She looks like she lives in Pt Chev and says ridiculous things like ‘oh we’re just normal average people here in Pt Chev’”
I mean, they’re not wrong.
Now, full transparency: I secretly love AI.
I’m fascinated by it. It’s basically magic. I’m deeply curious about its potential. I use ChatGPT and Claude daily — finding interesting ways it can support my life and work. But I’m specific about how I use it in creative work. I like writing articles like this, for instance, without any input from AI.
I also get the threat to jobs, privacy concerns, risk of bias, and the environmental impact. Artists are right to be wary of generative AI models (ask Scarlett Johansson). We don’t know the true impact AI will have on creative professionals. It’s both a threat and a potential asset to the creative community.
If it eventually means I don’t have to work, I have a universal basic income, and I get to make art all day, then yes, please. Yum yum, sign me up.
My relationship with AI is complicated.
I went to the link and clicked on Grace’s bubble. She started talking, welcoming me to the website. You could type her a message or click one of the suggested questions. I clicked, “Tell me about the shows on in 2025?” and Grace started thinking:
What a tease.
Not a great start for Grace. I’ll have to find the 2025 programme alone, like a chump. But if you were concerned about AI putting box office staff out of jobs, you can probably rest easy for a while.
Also — and I admit I’m being picky — but I didn’t vibe the name Grace. Kinda boring, no? It didn’t feel very creative for a company that deals in the performing arts. To help, I’ve compiled a list of alternative names that I think are more fitting: Encore, Spotlight, Bravo, Stella, Pip, Viola, Prompt, and Sam Neil. No credit needed. They’re on me, team.
I know AI doesn’t work all the time. I can extend it some grace (ah okay, the name is making more sense now). But that doesn’t mean it didn’t make me laugh. Two things can be true at the same time. A funny, minor PR fuckup — what a treat.
Part Two: Feedback
I raced to the Instagram comments section.
Within minutes of the announcement, the internet had responded:
“Really disappointed to see this move from ATC”
"Not sure how I feel about this with AI being such a huge threat to the Arts community”
“Yeah, this ain't it, chief. AI is actively robbing artists of jobs and consuming so much electricity and energy that it's actively decimating initial plans to reach climate goals. This is unequivocally a bad move on the part of ATC and you should listen to the artists and audience expressing their disappointment.”
“Really? While people are struggling to find employment?”
And while I found one user supporting the move:
The majority of responses were overwhelmingly negative.
ATC were quick to respond:
Two themes emerged from the ATC’s many replies:
Don’t be mean to our new employee
We want to preserve the nostalgia and integrity of our art form
Whatever the fuck that means.
They continued replying:
“When we launched a website because people want to book tickets online not just over the phone, it had bugs and sometimes failed.”
“this Al is in no way replacing any of the jobs of our Box Office team. Grace Al is enhancing the work our team can do, and provide customer support when we don't have a team available but when audiences may have questions.”
“When we have a new team member join, we don't expect them to be perfect at the job.”
Quick check-in. This is a weird way to talk about technology, right?
They also responded to concerns about the environmental impact of AI:
“The environmental impacts are real, from hosting our website to keeping the lights on at the [ASB Waterfront Theatre] however to help remove that feeling of being bummed out (and don't worry we love a novella) it's important to us to be a company that preserves the nostalgia and integrity of our artform, but we also want to ensure we offer our audiences including ones that would prefer to chat over email or ask questions anonymously to have the access to the information so that they can enjoy the work.”
“Sure, global warming is going to kill us, but also, you’re wrong?”
This phrase, “preserving the nostalgia and integrity of the art form,” kept coming up in their responses. For a moment, it tricked me. It’s got a lot of good words. Words that theatregoers like. It certainly feels like it could be saying something profound.
I mean, it’s not clear to me how an AI chatbot could contribute to the preservation of live theatre and the performing arts. But that’s just a technicality, right?
More people able to navigate the website means more people coming to the theatre means more professional theatre gets performed — at a stretch?
I fear it was empty words.
Marketing spin.
One commenter noted:
“You say in the post you'd like to hear people's thoughts, but your responses are just the same few generic lines to everyone without really responding to the what people are saying. It seems so defensive and not a genuine engagement with your audiences”
It made me wonder who was behind the profile. Which ATC employee was spending their Monday evening typing frantically to defend Grace’s honour?
Part Three: Marketing
I’ve worked in marketing.
Marketing Manager, it’s no big deal. (I’ve even built website chatbots. Not AI ones, though; I’m not that fancy.)
I’ve been invested in social media posts and checked after hours to watch them go live and confirm everything worked. When you’ve chosen to develop a new AI tool, you’re probably eager to see what reception it gets. This made me think the anonymous comments were coming straight from the top, ATC’s Director of Marketing, Joanna O'Connor — or one of her marketing manager colleagues.
Strap in, kids — this is where I go full red-string conspiracy board.
In an October interview with NZ Marketing Magazine titled, “Theatre company flips the script”, we discover that O’Connor is quite the AI fiend:
O’Connor was one of the first million users to jump on board with ChatGPT. Her first uses were personal – as a vegan, it took ages to trawl through blog posts to get to the recipes. With ChatGPT she could input what ingredients she had and ask the AI for cooking instructions.
Weird, haha.
And when it came to her marketing role, she used AI to create marketing campaigns for the eight plays in the 2024 season:
“And I need to come up with creative concepts for how we are going to promote these plays… When I’m confronted with eight plays, there’s a lot of reading,” she laughs.
“So I use CodyAI to upload the scripts and it told me the themes, the major conflicts, the character profiles, top quotes. I even went so far as to ask it to give me some taglines.”
C’mon. At least give the scripts a quick squiz, right?
She even used AI to generate poster ideas:
“To produce the artwork for the each of the plays, she talked with her team of artists about how they wanted it to look, then got their consent to use AI tools to render these concepts before the photo shoots… AI didn’t replace anyone’s jobs, it just made everyone get on better, she says.”
Now, to be fair. I’ve done this one. As a solo theatremaker, using AI to visualise a poster I couldn’t create myself was handy. I could show it to my design team to make it a reality. ATC isn’t a solo practitioner, they’re a professional theatre company. You’d think the money spent on Grace could be better spent hiring and putting trust into real-life artists.
Anyway, she loves the stuff.
Joanna, j'accuse!
Case closed.
Part Four: We’re Working On It
More than one commenter asked about Grace’s ability to use te reo Māori:
“my personal thoughts about ai aside, properly using te reo mãori is really important for the aotearoa theatre scene so would be good if that was something that was a priority and not a secondary thought”
ATC responded:
“it's absolutely a priority. We're working closely with the engineers to get the memphonics of te reo Mãori correctly. We're leading taking a lead here so that language can be inclusive. We're proud and very diligent to get this right.”
I don’t think memphonics are a thing. Maybe they meant phonetics?
They continued in another reply:
“it's our priority to train this Al on te reo, and get the information right, so just like our website now, it (she?) is a reliable tool for the box office team and our audiences”
The company that makes the technology powering Grace is D-ID — “The #1 Choice for AI-Generated Video Creation Platform.” Allegedly.
I couldn’t figure out the exact plan ATC was using, but the D-ID pricing page told me they’d be paying anywhere from $16 to $108 USD per month ($27 - $184 NZD). It’s pleasing to note that D-ID’s website proudly states, “Create Interactive Avatars to Engage Your Audience.” Which ATC’s avatar certainly did. ROI, tick!
It wasn’t clear Māori was one of the languages D-ID supported. It doesn’t surprise me — even Google and OpenAI are having a hard time doing it. I’m not saying ATC doesn’t have a team of engineers working on a custom version of D-ID, connecting Grace to other speech models with Māori pronunciation and New Zealand accents. But this seems like a significant investment for a theatre company — what does an AI engineer set a theatre company back these days?
Accessibility also came up:
“We invite access from all audiences, some of them will prefer this over reading a page of information or sending an email.”
Alright, I gotta call bullshit on this one.
Have a chatbot on your website. Pack it with AI for all I care. Young people like the things (god, I’m old). But honestly, text is fine. It doesn’t need to speak, and it certainly doesn’t need to be a digital avatar. This is a new technology — give it a couple of years to improve. You won’t miss the AI train when it hits.
A marketing colleague once told me, "If you need a chatbot on your website, you probably didn’t design your website very well.” Sage advice, I’d say.
I like ATC’s new website. It’s cute and target-audience friendly. Lovely. But if they genuinely wanted their website to be more accessible, they should take action and invest in it. For example, they could start including alt text on images for people who use screen readers. They haven’t done this. Or they could have NZSL-interpreted videos on each page for Deaf audiences. They haven’t done this either. While written English is available to some d/Deaf people, it’s not true for everyone. Grace isn’t accessible. (See Chunky Move for an excellent example of a performing arts company taking a creative approach to website accessibility.)
Part Five: Exit Stage Left
On Wednesday morning, I was about to show a friend the Instagram AI announcement that had me chuckling the previous night, but I couldn’t find the post.
ATC had deleted it.
Grace wasn’t accessible on the ATC website, either.
Poor Grace. Fired after less than 36 hours on the job. One of the shortest 90-day trials I’ve seen. It wasn’t clear whether she would return to the box office team.
All that was left of Grace was a brief mention of her on the company website:
So, the post vanished.
Which is very funny — thank fuck I took screenshots! It was also around the time I started writing this article. I DM’d ATC on Instagram:
hey, I’m writing a piece about your ai chatbot but I noticed it’s not active - what happened with it?
They replied:
Kia ora Hamish, thank you for reaching out. Grace AI needs some extra work and is offline for a few days. Our online concierge for customer service inquiries about the shows and subscriptions will be back online shortly. Our box office team want to ensure that she serves our audiences with accurate and reliable information, especially as we work to ensure all audiences regardless of their access needs have the information they need to have an enjoyable time at the theatre seeing the work of our incredible artists.
If you have a formal media request please reach out to atc@atc.co.nz and they will direct your email to the publicity and media team.
Pretty cool that they think I’m worthy of being called ‘formal media.’
Alas, I am not formal media.
But there you have it, "Grace AI needs some extra work.”
Botox, bitch. You’ll look fantastic.
Part Six: Receipts
I thought that was the end of it.
A funny little Substack article about a silly corporate faux pas… until a friend told me ATC had also posted to LinkedIn, and the posts were still there.
This is that shocking final twist part of a Netflix documentary when the secret files are found.
Here they are, in all their corporate social media glory.
And it looks like I was right — it was Joanna. Follow! And her colleague, Box Office Team Leader Gary Hofman. Hi Gary!
The comments under the LinkedIn posts do give some indication as to why they weren’t deleted.
Big fans.
And I found the original video — enjoy:
She’s like the Nigella of theatre concierges. Does that make sense? Maybe it’s just me…
Part Seven: Actors
There’s something special about the performing arts.
The live-ness of being at live theatre is what excites me. Anything can happen. We go to see real people — and experience a moment of life. Slapping AI on a theatre company’s brand feels like the antithesis of what draws people to the theatre in the first place. The majority of the comments would suggest as much.
Theatre isn’t about efficiency.
Sure, maybe Grace only costs $100 a month. But is that the best use of ATC’s funds? I’m not being facetious when I ask that, either. Could these funds go to improved accessibility? Or to more work for performers? We’re in an economy of routinely underfunded creatives.
Last week, Equity NZ, the performers union, went into collective contract meetings with Auckland Theatre Company. They’re negotiating for fair pay and better working conditions for actors. The union negotiation team met with Jonathan Bielski and Anna Cameron from the Auckland Theatre Company last Thursday.
Cuties.
I contacted Equity Director Denise Roche (Ngāti Raukawa) for comment. She told me she’d heard about the post:
“It was on instagram, it was taken down because of feedback that was negative. It’s clear they haven’t thought it through. From our dealings with ATC, the current management is very supportive of sustainable careers and incomes for actors. The gimmick side of the AI, has not been considered with that in mind.
I haven’t raised it with ATC at this stage because they took it down so quickly. I believe they genuinely believe they have the best interest in actors at heart. They’ve stated quite clearly that actors are their bread and butter. They’re what creates the product they deliver to the rest of the world. It does feel like a geuine relationship.”
I asked if she had any concerns about AI putting creatives out of work:
“Any AI that could be an actors’ job — advertisement, box office person, for example — it’s probably not going to put anyone out of work straight away, but it might mean there aren’t further opportunities down the track.”
I have to agree.
The intent was noble enough — streamlining operations, enhancing audience engagement, and maybe even garnering valuable data. What could go wrong?
As it turns out, everything — the AI didn’t work, and everyone hated it.
It speaks to a deeper tension that’s playing out across creative industries. While some industries are readily embracing AI tools and starting to be reshaped by them, there are certain spaces where I suggest we must tread more carefully. ATC’s misstep wasn’t exploring new technologies — audience accessibility enhanced with the use of technology is cool as shit. It was forgetting that their audience and performers came to them for a human experience. There needs to be a better way of doing this.
There is a telling comment in the NZ Marketing Magazine interview:
“There’s usually this almost conflicting space between an artist wanting to uphold their artistic integrity and then a marketer wanting to commercialise the artwork. AI was able to help us meet in the middle,” says O’Connor.
ATC is doing the corporate dance between art and commerce.
Unfortunately, I don’t think they’re in the middle yet.
They’re in the conflicting space.
For now, ATC has given us a valuable lesson in how not to launch your AI initiatives. They gave me a story I was excited to write about. And they gave us Grace. Who made me laugh very hard during a challenging week — the world is on fire — which is a real bonus and pretty impressive for AI.
Hamish
Fascinating thanks Hamish. I am quite troubled by the implications theatre staff feeding playwrights work into AI - particularly the NZ works. I don’t imagine Playmarket will be thrilled about this. We are getting into some murky copyright territory.
This is a great write up!