As Florida’s Premier Engineering and Technology University, UCF pushed the boundaries of innovation beyond the lab and onto the stage. In a bold experiment, students created a late-night-style variety show that turned artificial intelligence (AI) into a scene partner, a comedic foil and, in some cases, a full-blown co-performer.
The Late Night with AI performance was a part of the UCF Celebrates the Arts festival — an annual two-week cross-disciplinary creative showcase at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Orlando — joining a slate of events designed to highlight cross-disciplinary creativity. From immersive simulations to futuristic stagecraft, UCF demonstrated how emerging technologies like AI and digital twins are shaping the future of the arts and beyond.
As industries increasingly demand fluency in both technology and creative thinking, UCF is ensuring its students aren’t just adapting to change — they’re anticipating it. Whether in engineering, the arts, healthcare or other fields, the ability to think critically, collaborate across disciplines, and leverage emerging tools is becoming essential.
“We’re giving students the tools to lead in a world where technology and creativity are no longer separate,” says Jeff Moore, dean of the College of Arts and Humanities. “By integrating advanced technologies into the arts, we’re enriching their creative education while simultaneously preparing them to thrive in a workforce that demands both technical fluency and human insight. UCF graduates won’t just be ready for the future. They’ll help shape it.”
Developed through a collaboration between UCF’s School of Performing Arts and texts and technology doctoral program, the show originated in a Topics in Technical Theatre course focused on AI and performance. The production brought together undergraduate and graduate students from theatre, design and digital media in a fully original work that blurred the lines between art and technology. The result was part sketch comedy, part performance art and part real-time tech experiment.
Audiences encountered everything from a speed dating game powered by an AI chatbot, to a satirical musical theatre piece about AI-enhanced parenting, to an interactive game show that breaks down how AI processes language. Sam Sherrard, a third-year Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in theatre design and technology student, brought her background in team-building and experiential programming into the creation of the game show-style segment. She built a sketch that used shapes and color to represent the AI concept of “tokens” — the basic units of meaning in language models like ChatGPT.
“One of the early conversations we had was, ‘How does AI work?’ ” she says. “I’m creating a metaphor for that so our audiences can understand and interact with it.”
By turning abstract AI mechanics into a game, Sherrard found a way to bridge education and entertainment while making something tactile and engaging. As someone currently taking an introductory computer science course, she could read Python, a widely used programming language, but didn’t yet have a full grasp of all the tools and functions available. That’s where AI came in. Using ChatGPT to fill in technical gaps, she discovered a new way to problem-solve without ever handing over the creative reins.
“It doesn’t give me the final answer — it just helps me start the process,” she says. “It still feels like my work, because I’m the one solving the problem.”
Gil Bloom, a third-year BFA theatre design and technology student, led the creation of the show’s speed dating segment — an awkward interactive experience in which audience members attempted to flirt with a chatbot.
The idea was sparked by a text from his dad, who works for a company exploring the use of AI-powered call centers. Bloom tested one of the platforms, Bland AI, and was surprised by how smooth and fast the responses were.
The next day in rehearsal, surrounded by a room full of actors riffing on love, dating and tech, the idea clicked: take this customer service AI and turn it into an awkward, overly eager date. He built the segment around that concept, repurposing the AI’s quick-response capabilities to simulate a real-time, if deeply flawed, human interaction.
“I’m forcing this tech to do something it’s not really supposed to do,” Bloom says. “Which is everything we do in theater.”
The result was a stilted, glitchy exchange that became funnier the longer it dragged on. The chatbot stumbled, overshared and occasionally malfunctioned mid-sentence — like a date gone wrong.
Bloom, who comes from a tech-savvy background, designed the piece to strip away the mystery around AI by showing it at its most awkward and human-adjacent.
“It’s a machine that responds in real time and sounds like a person — that’s impressive,” he says. “But what it says is often kind of dumb. I want people to laugh at that and also realize what AI actually is.”
While some segments leaned into metaphor or narrative, Bloom’s used humor to peel back the curtain. That choice wasn’t just for laughs; it was a deliberate way to show how AI still falls short when it comes to nuance, emotion and real connection.
The course emerged from a growing need among faculty to help students navigate their creative futures in a world increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence. Assistant Professor of Theatre History and Dramaturgy Chloë Edmonson says the idea started with concern but quickly evolved into curiosity.
“We were trying to figure out how to be the best educators we could — how to help students navigate this ever-changing technological landscape while holding true to our standards,” she says.
When Edmonson and other faculty surveyed students in the department, they were surprised to find anxiety rather than enthusiasm. Many students said they were afraid AI would eventually replace them or ruin their creative careers.
“It surprised me,” she says. “I assumed I’d be the cautious one and they’d be eager to experiment — but they were concerned.”
That fear, she says, was rooted more in headlines than hands-on experience. And that’s what the course aimed to shift: giving students the space to explore AI as a tool, a collaborator and a philosophical prompt.
“There’s a lot of noise around AI right now — both fascination and fear,” Edmonson says. “This class let students get past that and explore what it really means to collaborate with AI in a creative space.”
The result was not only a technically complex show but a philosophical one, asking questions about authorship, originality, and the blurred lines between human and machine. It also reflected a much broader initiative at UCF: to break down the silos between disciplines and embrace a future where creativity and computation inform each other.
The university’s digital twins presentation — also part of UCF Celebrates the Arts — highlighted how real-time data and virtual modeling are opening new possibilities in theater production.
A digital twin is a virtual replica of a physical space, powered by sensors and simulations. For theater practitioners, that means being able to digitally map a performance space before ever stepping inside it. Directors and design teams can test lighting, sound and staging choices in a simulated environment, and performers can visualize how movement and blocking will interact with set pieces and audience sightlines.
“The people performing at UCF Celebrates the Arts have maybe been on that stage once — if at all,” says Eileen Smith, program director for the UCF Institute for Simulation and Training and director of the E2i Creative Studio, and Training and one of the panelists for the digital twins presentation. “But with a digital twin, they could step into a virtual version of the theater and understand how it works.”
For student artists and touring companies alike, it’s a powerful tool to rehearse smarter, design faster and better understand the relationship between space and storytelling.
UCF is a place where engineering students collaborate with actors, where dramaturgs analyze algorithms and where no idea is too out-there if it advances understanding.
The (tech-focused) events at UCF Celebrates the Arts weren’t just performances. They were a microcosm of a university that doesn’t just keep up with technological change, it helps define it. And as artificial intelligence continues to influence the way we live, work and create, UCF students aren’t waiting to see how it unfolds. They’re stepping into the spotlight and showing the world how art and AI can evolve together.
