Vertigo Student News Editor and Creative Editor Eryn Yates and Liv Litver ventured out to the Sydney Comedy Festival this April to review Tiffany Wong’s satirical and comedic night of hypotheses and science; Help Me ChatGPT - The Show. At the Factory Theatre under Marrickville’s flight path, Eryn and Liv took their seats, and were immediately made aware by Tiffany that in no way was this a comedy show; it was a science experiment in love. The hypothesis of the evening? That after months and months of sharing her most inner thoughts with ChatGPT, that it would know her better than she knows herself, and would be able to find her soulmate amongst the crowd, without the flaws and biases that exist within human judgement. (No, unfortunately Eryn and Liv did not leave the night with a Juliet to their Romeo).
Professor Tiffany Wong, clad in a blazer and armed with scientific jargon, presented a rigorous experiment into love and machine learning with comedic timing that is razor-sharp. She pivoted effortlessly between scripted monologues, improvised banter with the audience, and surreal live responses generated by ChatGPT. Wong’s ability to lean into the unpredictable chaos of AI outputs, from sweet to bizarrely inappropriate, kept the crowd laughing. ChatGPT became a supporting role in its own right: sometimes a helpful assistant, sometimes a saboteur, and often a brutally honest commentator on Wong’s dating life.
The structure cleverly escalated: early scenes set up the premise, drawing laughs with Tiffany’s over-sharing of deeply personal data (everything from her attachment style to the name of her childhood soft toy cat). As the night unfolded, the "experiment" moved towards selecting a soulmate, complete with live “peer reviews” from the audience.The interactive elements are particularly strong, as audience volunteers join the story in genuinely meaningful ways – not just for cheap laughs – contributing data points, asking questions, and even offering spontaneous advice to the romantic algorithm. Wong handles audience input with impressive agility, weaving improvised moments back into the broader narrative with a sense of trust and generosity that makes the show feel communal rather than performative.
Tonally, the performance walked a fine but brilliant line between self-deprecation and self-awareness. Wong doesn’t take herself too seriously, but she doesn’t let the show drift into total farce either. Her vulnerability, admitting to hopes, disappointments, and the very human need to be known, grounded the comedy and gave it emotional resonance.
As uni students navigating the soul-sucking world of online dating, and overwhelming weekly readings and anxiety-inducing turnitin scores, this show really stood out to us as a wake-up call to our reliance on AI. Without spoiling the show too much, Wong proves in her experiment that relying on AI to understand your own psyche will leave you with more questions than answers, because personality, character, and sexual and romantic orientations are so fluid that they’re impossible to predict, even by a super-computer. Human behaviour is impossible to predict, as it is flawed, irrational, and inconsistent, making the system churn out incorrect predictions and results that will leave those who rely on it disorientated and feeling like they will never know who they truly are. Through revealing the flaws in ChatGPT’s analysis of compatibility by applying them in the real-world (not to mention scientifically monitored and controlled) space of a comedy show, Wong proves that we truly need to just follow our human hearts, take risks, think critically (and independently), and learn from our mistakes. If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be, and that can’t be analysed by ChatGPT.
If you're looking for a comedy show that’s genuinely different, and one that will make you laugh just as much as it makes you think, Help Me, ChatGPT is absolutely worth investigating. So bring a silly hat, a jacket, and your own slightly suspicious, slightly complacent situationship with technology. You’ll leave with a sore face from laughing, and maybe a few new questions buzzing in your brain about just how much of yourself you’ve already surrendered to the algorithm.