by Jerry Seinfeld trapped in an algorithmically generated limbo
His field has been famously described as “a show about nothing,” and that description has become something of a prophecy, as a bizarre, AI-generated one His field The episode, titled “Infinite Nothing,” has been streaming on Twitch for a full month.
As the title suggests, the never-ending episode is very much “about nothing” because it is algorithmically animated His field Characters wander aimlessly through their apartment engaging in meandering, dreamlike conversations powered by OpenAI’s GPT-3 language model with minimal human moderation.
In an interview with Vice, Nothing, Forever co-creator Skyler Hartle explained the thinking behind the project:
“The real impetus for it was that it originally started out as this weird, very eccentric, nonsensical, surreal art project,” Hartle said. “But then we’ve worked over the years to bring it to this new place. And then, of course, generative media and generative AI have evolved in a crazy way over the last few years.”
“Apart from the graphics and the laugh track you’ll hear, everything else is generative including: dialogue, voice, directing (camera cuts, character focus, shot length, scene length, etc.), character movement, and music,” one of the creators wrote in a Reddit -Comment.
The result feels closer to David Lynch than Jerry Seinfeld, with the cast of characters seemingly caught in AI limbo, always on the verge of cracking a joke and waiting for a punchline that never comes. An eerie, misplaced laugh track lends a slightly sinister undertone to the AI’s awkward conversations.
The stream keeps dropping His field Apartment to Jerry Seinfeld’s stand-up segments, algorithmically generated jokes again (and frankly, they’re not that far removed from Jerry Seinfeld’s limp one-liners).
As an AI experiment, it’s an oddly intriguing watch, but the creators seem to have higher ambitions. Hartle continued, “As generative media gets better, we envision that you can always tune in to the future equivalent of Netflix and watch a show as many times as you want, uninterrupted. You don’t just have seven seasons of a show, you have seven hundred or infinite seasons of a show that has fresh content all the time. And so that became one of our cornerstones.”
After watching the stream, creatives can probably rest assured that AI isn’t coming for their jobs just yet. The AI is absolutely incapable of writing jokes, but it’s unintentionally hilarious.
AI-generated animation causes characters to thrash, stare at walls, and walk away while talking to each other; It’s like watching a group of Sims spiral into collective insanity.
During my watch, Elaine told the gang about a “near miss” she had after almost being hit by a guy on a bike. She went on to explain that the man didn’t actually ride the bike, but rather pushed it down the street “like a puppy.”
This delightfully off-kilter anecdote was followed by an awkward silence. Kramer then stood up unprompted and told the gang, “Sounds like a plan. Let’s go.”
Nobody moved.
