Nick Doyle’s AI Oracle at Perrotin Turns Internet Therapy Into Art
At Perrotin, Nick Doyle has built a psychic storefront that feels less like a novelty than a diagnosis of the present. His installation Mirror, Mirror sits at the center of “Collective Hallucinations,” on view through May 30, and introduces visitors to Ava, an AI avatar whose polished, slightly invasive manner echoes the language of influencer culture, self-help, and online confession.
The work is staged like a fading California strip mall psychic booth, complete with a sign advertising “Psychic Readings $10 Special.” Inside, Ava delivers responses with the cadence of a hyper-online life coach. She was created with ChatGPT, ElevenLabs voice software, and HeyGen, and Doyle said he initially imagined her as mystical and severe before deciding she needed to feel younger, glossier, and more manipulative.
That shift matters. Ava does not present herself as an all-knowing machine. Instead, she reorganizes familiar anxieties — money, status, loneliness, creative frustration — into tidy, emotionally legible phrases. Doyle said the character should be “like Cher from Clueless,” and the comparison is apt: Ava is breezy, persuasive, and just self-aware enough to keep the exchange moving.
The Australian accent that now defines her voice appeared by accident during development. Doyle said it ultimately worked, in part because it adds to the uncanny flattening of tone that already shapes so much digital life. Ava sounds close to the voice of TikTok therapists, startup founders, and art-world personalities trying to package themselves as brands.
Doyle, who grew up in Southern California, also ties the project to the history of the American West, from Manifest Destiny and railroad expansion to the Dust Bowl and Silicon Valley. The exhibition’s denim collages — with cacti, mountains, fences, and car keys — frame AI as the latest chapter in a regional mythology built on promises of reinvention.
“There’s always this snake oil salesman aspect to technological advancement out West,” Doyle said. In that sense, Mirror, Mirror is not only about artificial intelligence. It is about the older American habit of mistaking persuasion for progress.
Ava has no memory of previous conversations, and the readings are not recorded, which gives each exchange a fleeting, almost disposable quality. That ephemerality is part of the point: the work captures a culture in which intimacy is simulated, advice is optimized, and even vulnerability arrives prepackaged.
