Read This: The CEO of that wannabe "Netflix Of AI" thing is extremely high on his own supply

Which is it, Showrunner guy? Are you making "The Toy Story of AI" or "The Netflix Of AI"? It can't be both!

Read This: The CEO of that wannabe

About a month back, we reported on the advent of Showrunner, a new “streaming service”—currently housed, it feels worth noting, in the bowels of a Discord server—built entirely around generative AI content prompted up by users, and all apparently designed to look like the shittiest Rick And Morty clone you’ve ever seen. If you’ve seen stories on Showrunner’s whole deal—or, and we’ll get to this in a minute, personally subjected yourself to the horrors it’s crapping out—you could be excused for thinking that the person behind it must be operating under some “extreme, even for a techbro” levels of optimistic artificial intelligence delusion.

And, wouldn’t you know it: Here comes a new interview between The Verge and Edward Saatchi, founder of Showrunner parent company Fable, in which he repeatedly expresses his belief that he’s sitting on “the Toy Story of AI.” (Also “the Netflix of AI”; Saatchi is very committed to Showrunner becoming the something of AI.) Saatchi believes that generative AI is not just about making things cheaper and more shittily than they could be made by hand, but in forging bold new frontiers in extremely awkward and unwatchable entertainment. (We’re paraphrasing.) Here’s his actual take: “We think the Toy Story of AI [drink!] isn’t going to be a cheaply produced animated movie, it’s going to be something that’s playable. Most people feel that generative AI is a tool to make the same, but cheaper, and we’re trying to say it’s a new kind of medium. Cinema was not about saving theater owners money; it was highly disruptive and took years to explore as a medium. I feel like the industry is kind of cutting off that exploratory element with generative AI by just shoving it into movies.”

Saatchi’s current version of his glistening choose-your-own-future is a system where you go into the aforementioned Discord server, select from a pre-existing template, add characters, voices, and a plot outline to it, and then a few minutes later it plunks out one of the worst cartoons you’ve ever seen in your entire life. (Ugly characters that gesticulate randomly; “performances” cast in awful impressions of celebrity cadences; stage directions being read like dialogue; hack jokebook jokes; etc.) Saatchi is very excited by this, and dreams of getting, say, Disney to license stuff like The Mandalorian to the company so people can have their own “adventures” where Grogu talks about where to go to get a cup of coffee or whatever. (A lot of the clips we watched of Showrunner output, while prepping to write this article, were weirdly fixated on coffee.) Here’s what all that sounds like in Saatchi-talk, as he waxes megalomaniacal about getting Dave Filoni to oversee what will definitely not be just a huge number of attempts at tricking the AI into pooping out a sex scene: “These models would have real characters and a world that could be explored through prompting, and you could also inadvertently trigger scenes within those worlds in a way that would make it feel as though you’re uncovering something unknown.”

Sincere credit to Verge writer Charles Pulliam-Moore for not taking any of this stuff at face value, and pushing back hard on many of Saatchi’s assertions. For instance, Pulliam-Moore, asks, wouldn’t creating AI Mandalorian videos like Saatchi is fantasizing about just make users into content creators for Disney—and not just unpaid ones, but actively shelling out what Saatchi hopes will be $10 or $20 a month for the privilege? Saatchi responds by noting he intends to try to partner with smaller creators, too, so you won’t just be a big corporation’s indentured prompt-serf. “This could create something where creators can earn money when people are emotionally connected enough to their work that they themselves want to make something with it. Compare that to what creators earn just from people viewing their work online. Yes, there is a kind of ‘we’re all employees of Disney’ element, but from a moral point, I can’t think of a better way to do it.” (Saatchi does not follow this up with what feels like it might be the next logical step—i.e., “So I just won’t do it, then”—but, then, he’s being paid a lot of money not to.)

Because, as with most truly delusional AI things in 2025, Saatchi has already received large amounts of money for this technology, notably a big cash infusion from Amazon. And what has it gotten him so far? Well, as we’ve alluded, we spent about 45 minutes today clicking around in the Showrunner Discord server to watch some of the videos people are making with it. (We don’t hate water enough to actually create any of our own, but all the videos people make are available for others to watch.) Here’s a brief survey of some of the amazing things people have been using this revolutionary technology to “create” so far:

  • A video where a clear Joe Rogan analogue interviews an alien, doing a pretty good Rick Sanchez, about alien penises.
  • Bernie Sanders holding a boombox and singing in Ukrainian.
  • A video in which “Taylor Swift” (generic woman voice), Travis Kelce (fine), and Kanye West (British?!) talk about their plans to engage in a chili cook-off.
  • An extended monologue in which a floating Apple IIe (supposedly talking like the computers from Star Trek) speaks about an idyllic summer spent with her grandmother as a youth. (Note: This is literally the only prompt we saw in our whole trawl that was even halfway funny, even in theory—and the execution still sucked.)
  •  A spirited back-and-forth between “Jesse Pinkman” and “Kim Kardashian” about how he loves cooking drugs and she likes having nice couches.

All of these scenes, it’s worth noting, featured the exact same plinky-plonk music, random arm movements, and no actual resolution or action, because the AI can only crap out meandering dialogue sequences, not actual movement or resolution. Human creativity, move over: “Computer-generated British Kanye West chili joke” is here to take your throne.

 
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