The AI Entertainment Vendor Checklist
Six questions to ask before booking any "AI entertainment" act for a corporate event.
"AI entertainment" has become a popular label in event planning — and one of the least defined. Some acts use AI as a real creative collaborator. Some hit play on a video with "AI" in the title. Your audience — especially a technical one — can tell the difference in minutes. This checklist is how you tell the difference before you sign.
The Six Questions
- What is the exact signal flow?
Ask for the technical rider: audio routing, video handoffs, power requirements. A professional act hands you a document. A gimmick hands you a shrug. - What elements are pre-produced versus live?
There is a right answer here, and it isn't "everything is live." Today, no AI credibly improvises a performance on stage. Honest acts use AI in production — creating music and visuals humans couldn't render alone — and perform live to it. Fog on this question predicts public corrections from the engineers in your audience. - What's the load-in and soundcheck window — in writing?
Any professional act commits to a firm number before you book. If the answer changes when you ask twice, believe the second answer and add an hour. - How does the act handle redundancy?
Backup playback systems? Hardware redundancy? Or single points of failure between your audience and dead air? Your general session gets one chance. - Is the tech story honest?
Ask point blank: what's live, what's pre-produced, what reacts in real time? Pre-rendered isn't dishonest. Pretending it's live is. - Who holds contractual responsibility for rights and clearances?
Music licensing, voice replicas, visual content, promotional usage — is it the vendor, the production company, or you? If the vendor can't answer this question, that is the answer.
The One-Line Test
"Walk me through exactly what the AI does during the four minutes you're on my stage."
A credible act answers specifically and comfortably. An act that oversells gets vague — and a room of 3,000 engineers will notice even if you don't.
Why we publish this: we make the AI Amplification Experience, and we publish our own answers to all six questions — see What's Actually Live in an AI Conference Opener? — because we'd rather you ask.