AI Creativity Doesn't Exist With Chloe Radcliffe and Ed Ongweso Jr.

**Ed Zitron** (0:05)
Hello and welcome to Better Offline. I'm of course your host Ed Zitron.
I am back in the iHeartRadio studio bringing you it all live to tape technically from here in beautiful New York City. And today I'm joined by two returning angels of the Better Offline choir from CES 2026 and very likely 2027 as well. On my right, I have the wonderful Chloe Radcliffe, the actress and author and writer and everything at this point.

**Chloe Radcliffe** (0:43)
I haven't written a book, but I write a lot.

**Ed Ongweso Jr.** (0:45)
You're writing scripts and shit?

**Chloe Radcliffe** (0:46)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I guess, yes, writer.

**Ed Zitron** (0:50)
And top of the show, you have a show coming up.

**Chloe Radcliffe** (0:53)
I do have a show coming up, yeah. I'm doing my solo show. It's called Cheat. It's about how I have, uh-oh, cheated in all of my relationships.
The show does not condone cheating. I think it is always bad. I think it always hurts somebody, but I think it happens all the fucking time and nobody's willing to stick a microphone in front of their face and say that they did it. And I happen to be the one. Anyway, I'm doing it August 19th and 20th at Joe's Pub in New York City. It's gonna be, I think it's really gonna be amazing.

**Ed Ongweso Jr.** (1:18)
I'm saying it, it's fantastic.

**Chloe Radcliffe** (1:19)
I think it's gonna be amazing, dude.

**Ed Ongweso Jr.** (1:21)
I think it's gonna be fun.

**Chloe Radcliffe** (1:23)
Look, I'm very proud of the show. I have seen it hit people.

**Ed Zitron** (1:27)
I watched the old version, it was fantastic, and that was two years ago.

**Chloe Radcliffe** (1:30)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

**Ed Zitron** (1:31)
And of course, Mr. Ed Ongweso Jr. writer and critic, how you doing, Eddie?

**Ed Ongweso Jr.** (1:34)
I'm doing pretty good, you know? Having a nice day.

**Chloe Radcliffe** (1:38)
And I'm at such different paces.

**Ed Zitron** (1:40)
Well, I've been up since five in the morning because I've been doing media stuff all day, but that's the power of Zitron. But we're gonna start with you, Chloe. I wanted to actually ask you a very direct question. So you're going Hollywood, you've been in the acting business.
What have you seen of AI in Hollywood? Because if you read crap like The Anchor, they're like, it's everywhere, every single thing is written in AI now. What have you seen, if anything?

**Chloe Radcliffe** (2:05)
It is, I mean, it's carving out jobs like VFX and animation, for sure. There's a bunch of stuff in production, particularly in post-production, that is really, really, really being eaten by AI.

**Ed Zitron** (2:16)
Right.

**Chloe Radcliffe** (2:17)
I don't know any screenwriters who are actively using AI. It's totally possible that people are in the background, and they're just not talking about it.
So at my core, I'm a stand-up, and I come from stand-up. And I was like, no stand-ups are using AI. We all think it's fucking dumb. And then an exec told me recently that she hears in so many meetings with stand-ups that stand-ups all use AI to write their jokes or help them write their jokes, which is so fucking insane. It's so dumb. And it's also like, well, that's why, I mean, I do think that there's a lot of comedy that's starting to sort of coalesce. It's starting to sound the same a little bit. And I'm like, I wonder if that's why.

**Ed Zitron** (2:57)
So what's interesting about that, though, is because we're already seeing a monoculture develop outside of AI, that people are trying to do the same thing and box it up and sell it a million times. So I'm kind of unsurprised. The idea that standups would write jokes using AI is so embarrassing. I want to, I want, if you are a listener of this show and you know one, please email me easy at betteroffline.com.

**Ed Ongweso Jr.** (3:16)
Yeah, say something, say something.

**Ed Zitron** (3:17)
Yeah, this is important.

**Chloe Radcliffe** (3:19)
And I do, look, I understand the idea of like having something to bounce your ideas off of, to say like, what are other, you know, help me brainstorm angles on this concept, help me brainstorm takes. Like, I understand that impulse, but it comes down to the core debate around using AI in art, which is, do we value that art is made by humans? And like I just at my core, I can do.
And do we value that when you're using AI, you know, as a brainstorming tool, what you are, I guess, I guess there's the argument that you're like sort of weirdly using other humans because it's fundamentally eating ideas that other people have had. Right. And so you are sort of like, I can wrap my head around how somebody justifies it. I don't mean to be like, these fucking tools, you know, like.