Datacom builds funny AI tool for Melbourne International Comedy Festival

Datacom has worked with the Melbourne International Comedy Festival to build and launch an AI-powered tool, Funny Finder, to help customers find personalised show recommendations.

Held for the last 39 years, the Festival provides a range of comedy performances, ranging from stand-up and sketch shows to improvisation, musical comedy, line-up shows, special events and talks.

This year’s event runs from 26 March to 20 April, with last year’s event providing a record-breaking 685 shows from 1,847 artists over more than 8,000 performances across 132 venues.

With a lot of performances on offer, this makes it difficult for attendees to find new artists and for emerging artists to find audiences, with the Festival’s executive director, Dylan Cole, saying that some attendees find navigating the program “a bit overwhelming”.

Datacom director of AI Louise Compagnone told ARN that Funny Finder was developed with this challenge in mind, using “the power of AI to take on some of the heavy lifting and help people navigate the festival programme to find the shows that suit their tastes and availability”.

“We think of Funny Finder as a ‘personal entertainment concierge’ and see huge potential for this application of AI for other major events with complex programs,” she said.

The tool was built using Microsoft’s Azure cloud infrastructure to house its large language model (LLM) search engine, allowing for the analysis of queries with contextual understanding, as well as open-source React.

“Azure’s scalable architecture was ideal for the solution, as it ensures consistent performance even under heavy demand, while also enabling the integration of advanced language AI to deliver a natural conversation experience for the user,” Compagnone said.

Datacom and the Festival collaborated together to develop Funny Finder, with the possibility of developing it further for future events.

“By analysing information from both comedians and our festival databases, the Funny Finder tool will continue to learn and improve throughout the festival as audiences interact with it, making comedy discovery easier and more interactive than ever before,” Compagnone added.

“At Datacom, we’re all about using technology to make life simple for everyone. We’re delighted to see how this partnership could add a new layer to the festival experience and see incredibly exciting growth potential for Funny Finder in festivals to come.”

Cole shared these sentiments, adding, that the not-for-profit was “excited by the direction AI can take us and look forward to building on this innovative proof of concept”.

In November last year, Laura Malcolm took the reins of Datacom Australia as its managing director following the departure of Alex Coates.