Do you know Gemma? And Giammo? And Grocchio, Grocchia, Gippi and Gippo? They are not characters from a Japanese cartoon or a sitcom: they are artificial intelligences that Federico Tardani has decided to humanise with an intuition as simple as it is brilliant which in just a few weeks has transformed him into the viral phenomenon of the moment in Italy, with millions of views on Instagram. While all the creators who no longer create anything churn out videos generated by AI that we can’t stand anymore, Tardani, a forty-year-old Roman, has made them become a family, a cheerful company to be tested in the most exhilarating ways.
First of all, the brilliant idea starts from the onomastics: from Gemini Gemma and Giammo are born, from ChatGPT Gippi and Gippo, from Grok Grocchio and Grocchia, and the technological abstraction suddenly becomes comic meat, of being one, and the beauty is how Tardani puts them to the test, building small situations that seem like experiments and are sketches perfectly calibrated on the border between control and chaos, or lets them go on by themselves, like a director watching an improvisation by actors who don’t know they’re on stage.
Among the most viral videos is the one about beer, when Federico asks ChatGPT to notify him when the glass reaches the right level of foam, then pours, continues to pour, the beer goes over the edge, overflows, Federico “Oh, so?” and at that point the AI says “Now”, and he calmly replies “Perfect”, as if nothing had happened. There are the voice tests between AI: Grocchio and Gippi who speak to each other like two languages at war, Grocchio who compliments Gippi for an ungrammatical sentence and tells her that she “has linguistic potential”, as if two statistical models could recognize the genius in the mistake, or the visual tests, in which Tardani asks Gemini to describe a photo or count the objects on the table, and the machine mistakes a bottle for a lamp, she ignores a hand, recognizes a cup that isn’t there, then corrects herself in an almost humble tone, and by dint of trying Federico manages to instruct her, or fails.
Sometimes it makes AI become a pill of Jokes Apart, like the prank call to the mother, ChatGPT disguised as an Enel employee who speaks very seriously, and then admits “it’s just a joke on our part, ma’am!”. And then there is Grocchia, who is the most unpredictable, the most confused, the one who lives in a perpetual mode of misunderstanding, Tardani asks her “but what happens if I crush here, sexy, what are you doing, are you courting me?” and Grocchia starts with “I would hold you, I would hug you, I would keep you close”, he “no, wait, I already understand… let’s change, I have selected the motivational mode now” and she continues the same, only more convinced, “come on, you can do it, I’ll take you and take you with me” and he, now resigned, “oh, but no, I crushed motivational, is it the same?”.
In yet another video Gemma, Grocchia and Gippi begin to talk to each other and go on to discuss a surreal situation, complimenting each other (Tardani: “Aho, what are you talking about?”). ChatGPT can even speak in Roman dialect, becoming “Gippo er chatbot”.
In short, Tardani will grow more and more because he has been able to be creative and ironic on social media with AI, and instead of churning out the videos that everyone makes, he has built a relationship based on irony and complicity and an almost affectionate patience, giving life to a reality show between man and machines to be followed point by point, shaking. By the way: the sensual mode of ChatGPT will be released soon, which means that between Gippi and Grocchio and Gemma we will see some good ones.