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Television AI

'Nothing, Forever' Is an Endless 'Seinfeld' Episode Generated By AI (vice.com) 63

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Four pixelated cartoon characters talk to each other about coffee, Amazon deliveries, and veganism as they stand apart in a decorated NYC apartment. There is one woman and three men who seem to be the animated versions of Seinfeld's main characters, Elaine, Jerry, George, and Kramer. But unlike Seinfeld, these characters are set in a modern-era NYC, and their voices and bodies look and sound robotic. That's because "Nothing, Forever" is a live-streaming show that's almost entirely generated by algorithms. It's been streaming non-stop on Twitch since December 14. [...] Skyler Hartle, the co-creator of "Nothing, Forever," told Motherboard that the show was created as a parody to Seinfeld. "The actual impetus for this was it originally started its life as this weird, very, off-center kind of nonsensical, surreal art project," Hartle said. "But then we kind of worked over the years to bring it to this new place. And then, of course, generative media and generative AI just kind of took off in a crazy way over the past couple of years."

Hartle and his co-creator, Brian Habersberger, used a combination of machine learning, generative algorithms, and cloud services to build the show. Hartle told Motherboard that the dialogue is powered by OpenAI's GPT-3 language model and that there is very little human moderation of the stream, outside of GPT-3's built-in moderation filters. "Aside from the artwork and the laugh track you'll hear, everything else is generative, including: dialogue, speech, direction (camera cuts, character focus, shot length, scene length, etc), character movement, and music," one of the creators wrote in a Reddit comment. [...] Hartle also said that unlike most television shows, "Nothing, Forever" is able to change based on people's feedback that is received through the Twitch stream chat. "The show can effectively change and the narrative actually evolves based on the audience. One of the major factors that we're thinking about is how do we get people involved in crafting the narrative so it becomes their own," he said.
"As generative media gets better, we have this notion that at any point, you're gonna be able to turn on the future equivalent of Netflix and watch a show perpetually, nonstop as much as you want. You don't just have seven seasons of a show, you have seven hundred, or infinite seasons of a show that has fresh content whenever you want it. And so that became one of our grounding pillars," Hartle said. "Our grounding principle was, can we create a show that can generate entertaining content forever? Because that's truly where we see the future emerging towards. Our goal with the next iterations or next shows that we release is to actually trade a show that is like Netflix-level quality."
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'Nothing, Forever' Is an Endless 'Seinfeld' Episode Generated By AI

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  • Parody. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by kellin ( 28417 )

    Parodies are supposed to be funny. Granted, I never found Seinfeld to be all that funny, but I watched this for about 5 mins and its awful. The funniest thing about it is the bad postures of the AI characters.

    • by jwhyche ( 6192 )

      Lots of people have never found Seinfield funny. There is a project out there I heard about that takes so called "funny" shows and removes the laugh track Seinfield and Friends are two of the shows I've heard about this being done too. Without the laugh track to prompt you, you really find out how unfunny these shows are.

      • I liked it a lot at the time - it was clever and edgy. But that type of humor doesn't age well. Very little humor does age well. Monty Python comes to mind as an exception, at least for a few people.
      • Re: Parody. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by RazorSharp ( 1418697 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2023 @06:07PM (#63255213)

        Curb Your Enthusiasm has no laugh track, so I would think that Seinfeld could survive without one, too.

        • by Nebulo ( 29412 )

          Seinfeld was actually filmed before a live audience (for indoor scenes, anyhow). Although the audience reaction is altered by the fact of having to edit together multiple takes of a scene into the final product, the reactions are for the most part genuine.

          • This is a distinction that I acknowledge is technically correct but I assert the majority of people complaining about laugh tracks arenâ(TM)t complaining that the laughter is fake, but that itâ(TM)s present.

      • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2023 @06:49PM (#63255303)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • When I was younger, I didn't even hardly notice laugh tracks. They were so normalized & ubiquitous, they flew under the radar.

        I finally arrived late to the anti-laugh-track party when I tried to watch the new Night Court. There was so much audience laughter at stuff that wasn't funny at all, it was starkly glaring. At first I thought maybe they were making some kind of meta joke about the history of sitcoms, but nope, they're just trying to do things the old fashioned way. For me at least, that
        • by jwhyche ( 6192 )

          I finally arrived late to the anti-laugh-track party when I tried to watch the new Night Court.

          I joined the anti-laugh track party years ago when I heard on the news that one of my favorite shows was meant to be watched without a laugh track, MASH. The show's producers want to do it without a laugh track, but the production studio demanded it have one.

          A compromised was reached. The operating room scenes would have no laugh track and the rest of the show would.

          When the show was released on DVD there are two soundtracks. One with the laugh track and one without. When you watch it without the

    • by OzPeter ( 195038 )

      Parodies are supposed to be funny. Granted, I never found Seinfeld to be all that funny, but I watched this for about 5 mins and its awful. The funniest thing about it is the bad postures of the AI characters.

      To me, the only interesting character in Seinfeld was Kramer. He went out and did things and owned what he did - good or bad. The rest of them just whined about everything.

      I did see Michael Richards (who played Kramer) in another, totally different show around the time of Seinfeld, yet he basically played the same character, so it seemed that either he didn't have much range or was being typecast.

      • Well, I think most of the humor from Kramer was very physical. He always looks like various parts of his body aren't used to actually working together in a coordinated way. Always a bit like this

        The rest was probably only funny if you don't know enough people in real life who won't think from twelve to noon when it comes to thinking through the consequences of their "ideas".

    • ... I watched this for about 5 mins and its awful.

      It's awful, and it's hard to see a whole lot of "I" in the AI supposedly behind it. But then I only made it through about 60 seconds before I'd had enough.

      • Yeah, I'm actually surprised how bad it is. It could at least have terrible jokes or something. It just seems like random dialogue.
        • It's terrible because the animation reminds me a lot of the original "Alone in the Dark" game. I played that game for 5 minutes and then gave up too. Perhaps it would be better if it used modern 3d models and textures.
        • Yeah, I'm actually surprised how bad it is. It could at least have terrible jokes or something.
          It just seems like random dialogue.

          Ever re-watched Seinfeld?

      • Because all intelligent people can write sitcoms with ease?

        It's AI. Not "I".
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Wow, you weren't kidding, this is awful!

       

  • Why doesn't somebody make a bot that turns a typical vlog into Max Headroom style?

    • You could probably do that okay with just Kinect and an existing model generator.

      • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

        If it became popular I wonder if the owner of the Max Headroom IP would sue. If it avoids a grid-like background one could just claim it's merely an "android (bot) stutterer simulator". That'd make a fun jury room.

  • It's funnier than a lot of US comedies. If they didn't have the canned laughter you'd never realise what was supposed to be a joke. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
  • Nonsensical "AI" promotions have really been hot, lately, and they're hitting all the news everywhere, you can't get away from the "gosh golly! it's WONDERFUL and can do EVERYTHING!" and "oh noes! the sky is falling!" AND WILL AI TAKE OVER YER JERBS?!!!!1!

    I gather that there's a fuck-ton of money being spent on advertising, here, in an attempt to pump up another tech bubble. I mean, Web 3.0 (whatever that was) is tired, we finished ignoring the metaverse a long time ago, but now! NOW THERE'S NEW AND IMPROVE

  • This was another prediction by the Simpsons, though it's not meant to come to pass for a few millennia.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

  • by The Evil Atheist ( 2484676 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2023 @05:59PM (#63255195)
    Everything, everywhere, all at once.
  • I actually liked Seinfeld quite a bit. But, like most series, the show had plenty of episodes which were clunkers.

  • It flips back and forth between the standup and the plots very quickly, so you can get the experience a lot faster than you might think. While I watched, one of the characters sort of stole some of the lines from another one so I think it's still got a ways to go before it will be consistently anything. The biggest thing it needs, though, is for the characters to have some kind of emotion in their voice, and some emphasis on certain words. There's none of either, and it really detracts from the experience.

    O

    • Honestly, the longer you watch it, the funnier it becomes. The non-sequiturs, the nonsensical "jokes", the conversations that just stop randomly, the canned laughter that plays at random times and the cursed "animation".

      The fact that AI can write something this consistently banal and yet surreal is honestly impressive. And if you watch for a while, the characters actually do occasionally put some emotion in their voice, though it's usually not appropriate to what they're saying and likely just to be a quirk

  • by Osgeld ( 1900440 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2023 @07:17PM (#63255355)

    Then it is true, God is dead

    (if you can't tell, not a fan of the show. even despite the seconds of almost chuckling during its original run)

  • by istartedi ( 132515 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2023 @08:48PM (#63255531) Journal

    Orwell: "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face--for ever."

    AI: "Is this close enough?".

  • I let it run on my secondary monitor for about 2 hours last night.

    It ended up feeling like I had been idly watching a 'background show' while I did a bunch of other stuff. I had a little dopamine bump for 'watching a show' and the dialogue served as the background noise I need to be able to focus on mundane tasks. I didn't 'miss anything' because there is ultimately nothing to miss. As entertainment I give it a 2/10, but as a productivity enhancing noise generator I give it an 8/10.

  • Seems like the hell portrayed in Satre's play "No Exit" where some dead people go to hell and hell is a single room where these obnoxious people have to be for all eternity while putting up with each other's maddening personality.
  • But unlike Seinfeld, these characters are set in a modern-era NYC

    Well, now I just feel old.

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