The Last Two Jews

The Last Two Jews is a developing, two-channel AI-driven installation in which two chatbots, embodied as Jewish characters and imprisoned together in a virtual cell, engage in an ongoing argument about identity, culture, religion, and their own existence. Rather than following a pre-recorded script, the characters generate their dialogue in real time, responding to one another through a system of AI language models, synthesized voices, and animated avatars.

The exchange is livestreamed on Twitch, where viewers can interact with the broadcast through a live chat and are invited to donate. The work also incorporates a generated chat that simulates the activity of an online audience, creating a continuous stream of comments, reactions, and engagement around the characters’ argument. Audience donations influence the stream in real time, while a physical donation box and QR code in the gallery invite visitors to “support the stream.” Together, these live, generated, and physical interactions introduce the familiar economies of attention, participation, and monetization into the work. The installation brings the livestream into a physical space, allowing the characters’ endless conversation to operate simultaneously as an online broadcast and an artwork.

Part of The Jewish Dataset, the project uses the absurdity of two AI systems arguing over Jewish identity to examine how culture is reduced to data, stereotypes, and recognizable categories. As the characters continually attempt to define themselves and one another, the work asks what happens when identity becomes something to be generated, debated, and monetized by machines.