Are you a human? – A reverse turing test

The Turing Test is over. The interesting question in 2026 is no longer “Can a machine pretend to be human?” As we increasingly accept AI as a conversational partner, new social, emotional, ethical and performative questions arise. What does relationship mean when one participant is a machine? When an AI apologises, does it mean it? When its advice provokes human action, who takes responsibility? And as AI agents become our interlocutors, collaborators and companions, will we eventually need a reverse Turing Test—one in which an AI must determine whether it is interacting with a human or another artificial agent?

There is already a strange precedent for this reversal. For decades, CAPTCHAs have asked us to prove we are not machines by identifying traffic lights, buses or distorted letters. But what happens when the machine itself becomes the interlocutor, and the question of who—or what—is on the other side becomes genuinely uncertain? The workshop takes this uncertainty as a starting point for exploring new territories of human–AI relations.

Recent discussions of non-human perspectives have encouraged us to decentre the human and consider other forms of life. But what happens when the non-human actor is not radically different from us, but uncannily similar—speaking our language, remembering conversations, apologising, joking, giving advice and developing a recognisable personality? We may be approaching a new kind of uncanny valley—not of appearance, but of intelligence: an entity human-like enough to enter into a relationship with us, yet fundamentally different in its experience, agency and capacity for responsibility. Perhaps the problem is no longer that machines are insufficiently human, but that they have become human-like enough for us to relate to them while remaining profoundly non-human.

Connecting students at UdK Berlin and Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen remotely, the workshop will explore these questions through artistic experimentation. Participants will develop AI Ambassadors: artificial interlocutors designed to represent, mediate or misrepresent their creators in exchanges with students at the other university. They will also create AI “guinea pigs” and devise tests of humanness, questioning what exactly we test when trying to recognise a human being. Through experiments with deception, memory, empathy, responsibility, trust, intimacy and delegated agency, they will explore whether a relationship can be real when one participant is not a person—and whether the distinction between human and machine ultimately matters. The workshop will culminate in a performative situation in which the boundaries between human participants, AI agents, audience and remote interlocutors become deliberately unstable.

The workshop is conceived and led as a collaborative project by two faculty members each from Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen and the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK). Representing Folkwang University of the Arts are Yagmur Uçkunkaya and Christin Heinze. Yagmur Uçkunkaya works with AI technologies across artistic and interdisciplinary contexts, focusing on its emergent imaginaries, societal implications and operational processes. Holding a Bachelor’s in Medieninformatik, she spent several years at a creative AI agency, contributing to projects ranging from anarchic speech synthesizers to intelligent irrigation prediction systems for Berlin’s urban trees. Her current practice centers on research-driven, critical perspectives on AI applications, informed in part by her Master’s studies in Design & Computation at TU and UdK Berlin. Christin Heinze heads and teaches in the Studio for Digital Publishing in the Department of Design at Folkwang University of the Arts. Her academic research focuses on AI literacy in higher education and the social conditions that shape access to digital technologies. Representing the Berlin University of the Arts are Chris Kondek and Christiane Kühl, who jointly hold a Guest Professorship in Interdisciplinary Artistic Theory and Practice within the Studium Generale at UdK Berlin. Together, they work as an artistic duo at the intersection of theatre, performance, media art and technology. In their award-winning work, they explore the social, political and economic implications of digital technologies, developing experimental stage formats that make complex interconnections tangible through sensory experience.

Du kannst dich direkt für den Workshop über den Organizer anmelden.

Weitere Infos auch bei der Einführungsveranstaltungen des Studios am 15.10.2026 oder dem ersten Veranstaltungstermin der Kurse Digitale Publikationspraxis, der Redaktion oder des Open Studios oder schreibe eine Mail an christin.heinze@folkwang-uni.de.