'Maybe nobody wants this and it won’t work': Amazon is chucking an undisclosed amount of cash at AI-generated TV shows, but I'm struggling to see the appeal

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Three thumbs down.

Cartoon renderings of Tom Cruise and Kim Kardashian jabber in an AI-generated scene.
(Image credit: Fable, Showrunner)

This may scandalise some younger readers, but once upon a time you'd turn on the telly and simply watch what was on. The question of what to watch these days has only gotten more complex, with a wealth of streaming services now vying for your eyeballs. Well, Amazon may be touting AI as the answer—I mean, just judging by the undisclosed amount they've thrown behind startup Fable.

The Edward Saatchi-owned outfit has already been around for a few years, debuting with VR game Wolves in the Walls back in 2019. What's piqued Amazon's interest more recently is Fable's AI-generated 'streaming' service Showrunner (via Variety). Hop into the Discord, and you can start mashing out prompt-based animated scenes that are all about as bleak, monotone, and ugly as I was personally expecting.

Having already run as a closed alpha test with 10,000 users, Showrunner is currently free to use. The recent public launch offers a few 'story worlds' to plug prompts into, all powered by Fable’s SHOW-2 AI model. Exit Valley is a popular 'show' on the Discord, but very much reads to me like shockingly average adult animation that's trying way too hard. Using Exit Valley's AI stage you too can generate scenes like this one, where a cartoony Tom Cruise jabbers with a Kim Kardashian that refuses to skip arm day—and also inexplicably sounds progressively more Australian with every rep.

Edward Saatchi told Variety that the vision for Showrunner is to create something "playable," in a not entirely dissimilar way to mashing dolls together in a dollhouse. He said, "The ‘Toy Story of AI’ isn’t just going to be a cheap ‘Toy Story.’ Our idea is that ‘Toy Story of AI’ would be playable, with millions of new scenes, all owned by Disney."

Dropping the big D isn't just a powerful name drop, as Fable is apparently in talks with the house of mouse about licensing its IP for Showrunner. But even with such upfront ambition, even Saatchi is saying: "Maybe nobody wants this and it won’t work."

In conversation with Variety, he says this within the wider context of his earlier ventures into VR not taking off as he had hoped. But Saatchi also concedes that "today AI can’t sustain a story beyond one episode," and that the technology is perhaps better suited to "deeply episodic shows with characters largely resetting every episode — sitcoms, police procedurals, space exploration."

I mean, points for self-awareness, but I'd argue even traditional intrigue-of-the-week shows often feature season spanning narrative arcs or even simple callbacks. Don't worry, I'll spare you my impassioned defence of Elementary as the genuinely better take on 'Sherlock Holmes, but make it a cop procedural' from the 2010s. Anyway, besides that, I was already looking at Showrunner's dollhouse and loudly wondering what the point of it all is.

For one thing, deciding what I want to watch via traditional streaming services already requires work amounting to a low-level research project—I already enjoy that work, so why would I put my energy into the well-draining black hole of AI? For another thing, 'playing' with established characters and IP just makes me think about the good old, wonky days of machinima—to say absolutely nothing about the fanfic burning a hole on my hard drive.

With these creative outlets and more already available to me, I don't really feel the need to play within the confines of Showrunner's corporate, AI playground.

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Jess Kinghorn
Jess Kinghorn
Hardware Writer

Jess has been writing about games for over ten years, spending the last seven working on print publications PLAY and Official PlayStation Magazine. When she’s not writing about all things hardware here, she’s getting cosy with a horror classic, ranting about a cult hit to a captive audience, or tinkering with some tabletop nonsense.

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