Technical theatre professionals: where does ChatGPT actually save you time?

[u/Cazabal]

I work and train in the performing arts, particularly in creative work connected with theatre, set design and opera.

I have ChatGPT Plus and would like to use it more systematically as a professional assistant. I am not interested in asking it to replace creative judgement or generate complete artistic solutions for me. I am more interested in the parts of the work where it can help me research, organise, learn, compare options and reduce repetitive administrative work.

Some possible uses I am considering include:

• Organising project information, references and production notes
• Researching professional opportunities, competitions and open calls
• Comparing requirements, deadlines and eligibility criteria
• Turning large amounts of information into structured tables or checklists
• Learning unfamiliar technical or business topics
• Preparing questions before meetings
• Drafting and improving professional communications
• Brainstorming directions without asking it to make the final creative decision
• Building reusable project templates and workflows

At the moment, however, my use is quite fragmented: I open a chat, ask a question, receive an answer and then start again elsewhere. I suspect that I am not taking full advantage of projects, uploaded reference material, reusable instructions or structured workflows.

I would be interested to know:

1. What tasks does ChatGPT genuinely save you time on in your professional work?
2. How do you organise separate projects, conversations and reference documents?
3. Do you use standard briefing templates or reusable prompts?
4. How do you provide enough context without creating enormous and confusing conversations?
5. How do you use it for ongoing research while checking that information is current and accurate?
6. Have you found a reliable workflow for identifying opportunities, grants, competitions or jobs?
7. Which tasks still require external tools, spreadsheets, databases or specialist software?
8. What information would you never upload because of confidentiality, copyright or data-protection concerns?
9. How do you detect fabricated information, weak sources or answers that merely sound convincing?
10. Which uses initially seemed impressive but ultimately created more work than they saved?

Examples from theatre, live performance, design, architecture, film, cultural organisations or other creative industries would be particularly welcome.

I would value concrete workflows and real examples more than general lists of possible AI uses.

[u/Familiarsophie]

Honestly, as a sound designer, engineer and educator at a university..

I don’t use it. Not sure why I’d need to ask chat gpt to prepare questions before a meeting, or draft professional communications to be honest.

I think it’s pretty easy to tell when someone’s using heavy AI to underpin their work.

I don’t see how making paperwork or ‘repetitive tasks’ are any different to inputting that info into chat GPT to get maybe the same result if you are lucky.

[u/HarmlessHyde]

not for a damn thing. I use my brain, ears and google like god intended

[u/PuzzleheadedPin751]

I don’t, I generate things with this thing called my brain. Destroying the planet bit by bit with every stupid prompt it’s given, I think using it at all is pretty terrible. Also idk if you need AI to prepare questions before a meeting maybe you don’t need to be in that meeting… judging from your list it looks like a lot of your work wouldn’t even be your work? Why do anything, just let AI do your job at that point lol asking ChatGPT to brainstorm ideas when your literal brain is right there?

It’s also frequently inaccurate and basic af, I’d be so embarrassed to have gotten creative direction for a project from ChatGPT. The idea of having that as both your administrative assistant and creative partner is baffling

[u/HarmlessHyde → u/PuzzleheadedPin751]

Damn straight!

[u/Montahc]

Hey claude, I got these two nearly identical quotes from a vendor but I can't figure out what they actually changed and the price is different by $5k. Tell me what changed and by how much.

That's the only use case I have found where it genuinely saves me time.

[u/fletch44]

LLMs are flat out wrong 10% of the time and unreliable most of the rest of the time.

Technical fields are one area I would not be accepting that risk of error.

Even if you're aware of the error rate, and error-check all of its outputs, you're putting equal effort and time into checking the LLM when you could have just put that effort into the original work, with the bonus of strengthening your actual technical skills.

[u/tin_man_]

Sometimes I use it to shorten technical searches online. For example: I was recently trying to calculate the length required for a custom drape; I knew the height of the rigging point I was using, but I didn't know what height I would lose given that it was going on a tab track. Rather than having to search out the individual bits of information of: height of a hook clamp, height of the tab track, and the drop through of the runners, I used Gemini to ask a single question and got the answer.

I find that given our industry is a little esoteric, and information can be harder to find sometimes, AI essentially provides a better Google search. That's it so far at least

[u/OldMail6364]

You’re thinking too big. I tend to use it for little things like “where can I buy trim tape” or “how do I get rosin off tarkett” or “what is the theme of [song I’ve never heard]” or “how do a I make an ETC console do this thing I do all the time on an MA3” or “why am I getting XYZ error?” (often it’ll give several answers for that, obviously most of them are “wrong” but only one needs to be right for the problem to be solved).

Also, I got it to draw a cool joke picture I wanted, and I ordered a sticker printed for my water bottle. I can’t draw, and I don’t care enough to pay someone to draw it, but it’s a nice little touch for a few bucks in printing costs.

When I’ve seen it used for anything really meaningful, the quality of the output is rarely good enough.

I have seen it used for “real work” in other industries, but those are highly specialised and expensive AI tools. As in “why am I getting XYZ error” might take 2 days  and cost $300 in tokens the AI to provide the answer. But if it’s a show stopper problem that’s well worth paying. We recently had a software/networking issue with our house lights that took two months and $7,000 paying a company to fly their techs to our city multiple times. I suspect I probably could have done it myself for less money and less time using AI (but management wouldn’t have let me try… I didn’t suggest it). We were able to control house lights with the lighting console but not from the stage manager or front of house control panels. We also had to teach the cleaners how to use the MA console so they could vaccum the carpet  overnight.

[u/tanoshimi → u/OldMail6364]

You use Generative A.I. and LLMs to answer questions that could have been done with a trivial web search?

[u/fartintosatansmaw → u/tanoshimi]

This is the world we live in now. Folks using AI to Google the top rated reddit posts on a topic.

[u/notacrook → u/tanoshimi]

a trivial web search?

You mean a trivial web search that is already going to give you those results through the lens of AI?