Artificial Intelligence is a virtually endless range of possibilities. It can generate images, texts of all kinds (including movie scripts), create impressive Deepfakes and things we are not yet able to discern. But what few of us expected is that it would be able to direct a sitcom.
On Twitch there is a channel called watchmeforever that is currently broadcasting Nothing, Forever, a 3D animated series generated entirely by Artificial Intelligence. Being AI-generated, the series is never-ending, timeless, and draws from all 180 episodes of Seinfeld to generate its content. It is, therefore, like a strange expansion of Seinfeld that has similar characters (they are the same but without their original names) and their characteristic humor… although passed through the AI filter.
In Nothing, Forever there are no scriptwriters, animators or voice actors, but there is a script, animation and dubbing. All of this, however, is generated by various Artificial Intelligence tools, which use machine learning algorithms to generate its content.
Of course, the quality of the series is pretty horrendous. You only have to take a look at the channel’s continuous live stream to realize that its graphics couldn’t be more basic, its scripts dumber (and in most occasions without a strict sense to guide them) and its voices more robotic.
But, even if the quality is not very high, Nothing, Forever is an impressive and unprecedented experiment in the advancement of AI. All this technology may still be in its infancy for what it can achieve, but it already gives small hints of what it is capable of: and yes, it looks like in the future many of the contents we now consume will be created by robots.
According to The Verge, the creators of the project have been shaping it for a long time. Skyler Hartle, product manager at the Azure company, explains that he has been secretly working on this project for more than four years, together with his partner Brian Habersberger.
Although everything is AI-generated, Hartle has not explained what kind of technology has been used to make all this possible: we assume that he wants to keep it secret so that he does not have competitors. However, through a Twitter thread he has explained that the basis of the whole project is GPT-3 technology.
GPT-3 is an autoregressive language model created by OpenAI, on which all ChatGPT is also based. However, the company already uses a more modern version of this model, GPT-3.5, and is expected to continue evolving this year to GPT-4. At the rate things are going, it wouldn’t be surprising if we even get to a higher number of this model sooner than we think.
Nothing, Forever is a series intended to air uninterrupted, as this is a large part of its charm. However, Hartle has advised that, due to technical issues having to do with the GPT-3 upgrade, it is possible that the broadcast will stop at some point and return at a later date.
If this happens, however, they would resume broadcasting as soon as possible, once they manage to fix the relevant problems. And by having automatic saving systems, the continuity of the series should not suffer any kind of conflict.
What does AI have in store for us after Nothing, Forever?
The ultimate goal of this project (and many others that are underway) is to see how AI technology can be brought to content creation. Clearly, it can give us animated series very quickly in the future. But it doesn’t have to stop there.
According to Hartle himself, AI will also be able to develop video games sooner rather than later, and optimized for the tastes and experiences of each player. This could mean that the dreams of titles like No Man’s Sky could finally be fulfilled, with an impressive range of gaming possibilities to try out.
Of course, there is still a long way to go. Technology is advancing very fast, and companies like Microsoft and Google are not afraid to invest everything in this race for AI. However, as this is such a clear trial-and-error process, there are still many, many experiments to be done before we reach new ports of technology and progress.
