Whisper

Yoki Yao

Whisper is a kinetic art installation that simulates a looping Game of Telephone (also known as Chinese Whispers). It uses AI’s text-to-speech (TTS) and speech-to-text (STT) services to repeatedly transmit the subtle warnings displayed on the interfaces of popular AI chatbot agents. These include: “ChatGPT can make mistakes. Check important info.” (ChatGPT), “Gemini can make mistakes, including about people, so double-check it.” (Gemini), and “AI generated, for reference only.” (DeepSeek). The process involves one unit converting text into speech with TTS, passing it to the next unit, which uses STT to recognize the speech and generate new speech based on the recognized text, continuing in a loop. In this work, TTS and STT, two of the most widely applied AI services, demonstrate their reliability. Meanwhile, the format of the telephone game serves as a metaphor, hinting at the potential vulnerabilities and risks inherent in these technologies and the system itself. This work does not aim to prove whether AI is reliable or unreliable; instead, it seeks to provoke reflection on the blind spots that underpin our trust in the technology and the systems.

Project Collaborators:

Artist: Yoki Yao Yoki Yao is a new media artist based in Hong Kong. Her recent practices mainly span across artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction. Focusing on perception and cognition in the digital environment, her outputs range from interactive installations, visual arts to live performances, in which text-based AI and image-based AI are mainly explored. Her work Whisper has been shortlisted for the FutureTense Award in 2025. Her work Humanoid has been awarded the FountainPrize in 2018.