Seinfeld first aired in 1989, running for nine seasons. Its popularity has prevailed, so many years later, with demand continuing until present day. But an unlikely occurrence has come from this: an AI-generated episode of the hit show is being live-streamed on Twitch, in a never-ending loop.
Entitled Nothing, Forever, the infinite episode/show features mechanical characters and pixelated animation. Jerry, Kramer, Elaine and George, the main characters, remain the fixation of the show, but they exist in contemporary New York. The foursome oscillate between their apartments and Jerry’s stand-up setting, with an occasional laugh track erupting in the background.
According to the show’s Twitch page, Nothing, Forever channels the popular description of Seinfeld by describing itself as “a show about nothing.” But unlike the comedy show, which ended on May 14, 1988, this program “happens forever”. It’s “kinda like popular sitcoms of the past, except that it never stops”. The channel promises that the stream will run “365 days of the year, and [deliver] new content every minute”. At the time of writing, 1,396 viewers had tuned into the livestream, which has been playing non-stop since Dec. 14 last year.
According to Vice, the creators intend for the show to be something of a parody to Seinfeld. Mismatch Media, the media lab behind it all, focuses on using generative technologies, like OpenAI and DALL-E, to create experimental forms of entertainment like television shows. For the dialogue in Nothing, Forever, the creators utilised OpenAI’s GPT-3 language model. Outside of the moderation filters within the AI, there is little human moderation.
The show hardly runs smoothly — the characters speak robotically about their lives, some scenes are left unfinished and without context, and the accompanying laugh track emerges at arbitrary times.
Yet, people seem to be hooked.
Can we safely say this is the future of television? Perhaps not just yet. But considering the Twitter reactions so far, there appears to be some scope.
