A streaming service called Showrunner that is looking to become the “Netflix of AI” will allow subscribers to create their own shows.
“Fable Studio, an Emmy-winning San Francisco startup … announced Showrunner, a platform the company says can write, voice and animate episodes of shows it carries,” the far-left Hollywood Reporter reported. “Under the initial release, users will be able to watch AI-generated series and create their own content — complete with the ability to control dialogue, characters and shot types, among other controls.”
“The vision is to be the Netflix of AI,” Fable Studios’ chief Edward Saatchi explained. “Maybe you finish all of the episodes of a show you’re watching, and you click the button to make another episode. You can say what it should be about, or you can let the AI make it itself.”
Using a couple of words or a hundred words, users can explain their idea to a computer and the AI system will run with it. From there, users can tweak away to their heart’s content — everything from dialogue, to lighting, to performance and camera angles.
If the streaming service picks up or highlights your show, creators will receive a share of the profits.
Obviously, this scares Hollywood to death — the very idea of the proles controlling their own entertainment. It also terrifies (and should) the people who make movies and television shows. What’s to become of writers, camera operators, editors, cinematographers, and the hundred other people needed to produce video content when AI takes away their jobs? Well, now these people might feel a little empathy for a working class that has been losing their jobs to automation for decades.
Welcome to the Brave New World, bitchez.
Let me tell you who’s really excited about AI, although they are scared to say so, at least for right now, and that’s directors. If AI allows them to achieve their vision without having to deal with all the horrors of an actual physical production…? That’s Nirvana.
Fable, which won an Emmy in 2019 for innovation in interactive media, figures to keep costs down by having users create the content that others will watch. The model demonstrates the anxiety and fear that some creators have over AI: If the tech can function as all-purpose crewmembers and talent, that undercuts the value and demand for their labor. Union protections, some of which bar the use of AI tools for now, will likely take on even more significance if the company can prove there’s a market for completely AI-generated content.
Another reason this idea should terrify the studios is how this technology will drain customers away from Hollywood’s crap in the same way YouTube drains viewers away from Hollywood’s crap. People enjoy producing and watching their own content. And as far as I’m concerned, this is a return to normal.
Keep in mind that in the long history of mankind, a mass and centralized entertainment media and culture is still brand new. For most of our existence, tribes, villages, and families created their own culture and stories. That’s not to say mass culture is an entirely terrible thing. For about a hundred years, it was a wonderful thing that tied us together through our shared love of sports, Judeo-Christian values, and ideals. Today, though, mass culture has been corrupted into something demonic and divisive by the extreme left, so returning to an atomized culture is for the best.
Who wouldn’t want to try this? I’d love to try it. AI removes everything that stops everyday people from creating their own movies and TV shows — the studio system, distribution issues, and mostly the cost.
John Nolte’s first and last novel, Borrowed Time, is winning five-star raves from everyday readers. You can read an excerpt here and an in-depth review here. Also available in hardcover and on Kindle and Audiobook.
