Emmy Winner Fable Introduces Showrunner: Simple Tips to Build Your Own South Park Episode

Written by: Dean Takahashi

Source: VentureBeat

Fable, a San Francisco-based startup, is working on a massive project called The Simulation. Recently, the company released Showrunner AI technology called "SHOW-1", which can generate new episodes featuring users.

Generative AI has come a long way in the past six months, and this is another big step forward for generative AI. Especially considering the recent strikes by writers and actors in Hollywood, the introduction of this technology is particularly interesting.

The company, which has won two Emmy Awards and a Peabody Award, recently released a research report outlining the potential of its artificial intelligence Showrunner Agents, including writing, producing, directing, starring, editing, dubbing and more.

“Essentially, what the AI producer does is make South Park episodes for you. All of that is created by the Showrunner,” Fable CEO Edward Saatchi said in an interview with GamesBeat. “It’s not just dialogue. It can also animate, dub, and edit. For TV episodes, Showrunner can also generate directly, and users can create a one- or two-sentence prompt to generate episodes. People say that AI can’t tell stories. But in fact, it can.”

South Park Episodes Created by AI

As an example of the power of the technology, the Saatchi team released an AI episode of South Park.

"This paper is just the beginning -- imagine a world where fans can immerse themselves in their favorite shows, create new episodes, and compete to create the best episodes ever, or a world where creators use AI Showrunners to create their own original shows," Saatchi said.

In one AI-generated episode, Saatchi and Cartman develop an intriguing romance. Another episode, Westland Chronicles, is based entirely on simple text prompts written by Saatchi. In Westland Chronicles, researchers from the "Bizney" research facility attempt to use AI to entertain America's children with disastrous results, leading to a national scandal at a corporate entertainment studio and retribution from the Writers Guild of America (WGA).

Regarding rights to South Park episodes, Saatchi said: "We will not be releasing Showrunner commercially, and we are not in talks with the South Park people (although we are working with multiple studios and creators on original IP). We are using South Park just to give people a point of comparison between super high-quality human programming and artificial intelligence programming. Explore the mock drama."

Personally, I thought this episode was really well done.

starred by me

Episode featuring AI-generated Dean Takahashi

For Saatchi, a show with himself is certainly hilarious. And the other show he created that had me in it was hilarious to me as well.

“Not only do I want to create new shows that I love, I want to be in shows that I love. I want to play a second lieutenant on Star Trek, or a second lieutenant on South Park,” Saatchi said.

With my approval, the team also created an episode of the show starring me based on a similar text prompt. Since the company doesn't intend to distribute the episodes for profit, it's not expected that South Park's owners will come to their door either.

In fact, Saatchi believes that entertainment companies could adopt this technology to serve fans, so that fans can create personalized content based on their favorite IP. Traditionally, Hollywood has looked down upon such behavior and even sued fans. But Saatchi believes times are changing, and this could become a new revenue stream.

The technology, Saatchi said, could be used to create a world where fans can immerse themselves in their favorite shows, creating new episodes and vying to create the best episodes of all time.

Fable is opening up the technology to AI researchers to explore how to create multi-agent simulations in which AIs are given live TV shows. However, Saatchi emphasized that AI material should not be considered literary material, and that Showrunner, which helps humans bring ideas to life, is not itself a credible co-author.

Acknowledging that the release of the technology has raised troubling questions among Hollywood screenwriters and actors on strike, Saatchi said the threat of AI to Hollywood is real and that screenwriters need clear assurances about the use of AI in Hollywood. In the South Park episode's disclaimer, Fable noted that the celebrity voices were "poorly generated" and "used for research purposes only."

Saatchi noted that there are multiple facets to the technology. Showunners can be used by studios to sabotage artistic expression, or by writers or directors to bring their original scripts to life without a huge budget and team.

Generative Future of TV

Studios and creators will have to think hard about the business models of the future, which Saatchi calls "generative TV," where AI produces TV shows for IP holders, creators/actors or fans.

"If it's their own IP, the creator can build a simulated world and then generate a profitable show and put it on YouTube," Saatchi said. "They can have a channel, or if it's a really good show, they can sell it to Cartoon Network and make money from it. So this can become a kind of platform for generating television."

IP owners could sell people subscriptions like Disney+, Saatchi argued. Behind a paywall, people can create their own episodes with Disney characters. Watching all the episodes of a show is so much better than rewatching it 20 times.

But fans may not own what they create, Saatchi said. They just pay for the privilege of being able to create, but can't share it outside the paywall or make money from it. That's a bit harsh on fans, since fans of games like Fortnite can already create their own scenarios and benefit from them when they become popular.

As part of their research, Showrunner was used to develop animated versions of relationship dramas, space battles, hospital crises and murder mysteries.

“I can imagine a world where after three seasons of a show, there’s a sort of AI conglomerate. Because there’s enough of a model, after the AI conglomerate takes over, the show can go on air,” Saatchi said. "Whether it's controlled by the studio, or someone says I can finish the last season of Game of Thrones, or give you whatever you want. You just give it a cue, and it will generate the corresponding episode. If you want to make an episode where Captain Picard has a diplomatic meeting with the Klingons and it goes wrong, you can make it."

Saatchi said that you can imagine the AI living in the form of The Truman Show, with a weekly episode of highlights. Fable researcher Philipp Maas said: "Not long ago, South Park released an episode about what it means to use chat GPT. This got us wondering if we could use a virtual Showrunner to prompt multiple AI 'systems' to generate a comprehensive episode."

The first Simulation AI revolved around an AI-generated South Park. Live it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and produce a highlight episode of The simulation every week. This is a research project to demonstrate the possibilities of the technology and will not be commercialized.

“As an artist and a storyteller, it’s extremely disturbing to find out that AI is becoming so effective, and we want to share our research in a non-commercial way so that screenwriters who are now impacted can actively negotiate with studios — the threat is real, and Hollywood has to slow down, which is why we won’t be releasing this technology outside of demonstrations to researchers and journalists,” Saatchi said.

“South Park has always pushed boundaries, and we knew it was going to be a challenging subject,” Saatchi said. "South Park's original visual style fits with the current technological capabilities of these systems, with the potential for more complex animation and visual fidelity in the future. South Park has always been self-aware and self-critical, and the genre has always been more aware of its own existence."

He added: "The WGA strike rightly focuses on the idea that AI should not represent literary material, and that AI cannot be used to reduce the number of screenwriters. Banning AI-using studios seems sensible, and setting the rules for Hollywood's treatment of AI is critical. As filmmakers from Pixar, DreamWorks, and Sony, we believe that movies are meaningless without screenwriters."

Background on Fable and The Simulation

The South Park episodes and Showrunner are another step up for Fable. Earlier, Saatchi announced that the company will create a world filled with AI characters that will be trained by real people to live in virtual worlds.

The ultimate goal of Fable's The Simulation project is to create artificial intelligence at the level of human intelligence, and eventually to create artificial general intelligence (AGI), an AI that meets and exceeds human intelligence, and eventually becomes a new form of life.

The company was originally a division of Oculus, which is owned by Facebook (now Meta). It has produced a number of virtual reality films and won its first Emmy for "Henry." It then went on to win again for Wolves in the Walls, a VR experience starring the avatar Lucy. Last week, Fable also won a Peabody Award for its artificial intelligence avatar Lucy.

The problem with Lucy, Saatchi said, is that she has no history because she never lived her own life. She's a chatbot, but she can't relate to other people in conversations like "I had a pet too, but it died. So I know that feeling". With The Simulation, AI characters live their own lives.

The company will release tools for The Simulation 3D world later this year, Saatchi said. People will be able to enter The Simulation world, and Fable can then automatically create a storyline based on what's happening in the 3D world.

"It solves a key problem in simulations, which is infinite storytelling," Saatchi said. "We thought about Joseph Campbell and prototypes, trying to abstract some kind of baseline of storytelling. But I don't think that's going to work. So we think television is the best example of infinite storytelling."