This week I watched something that on some levels is conceptually very cool. The reality, however, may end up being more scary than cool. “The Simulation” is a Fable Studio’s produced endeavor that takes AI generated text in the form of GPT-4 and marries it with image generation to create new episodes of South Park on the fly.

Using a technique that is relatively simple on its face – so simple that the underlying principle could be used to do the same for other intellectual properties in the near future. As the fake episode of South Park jokes Star Wars and other hit properties won’t be far behind. In the simulated town of south park – Fables studios have sampled 1200 characters and 600 background images to create the town – the citizens live out their normal small town lives (with UFO’s and aliens, giant monsters and Barbra Streisand) until you give the “Showrunner” a prompt. Quite suddenly – an episode starts to play and runs the 22 minutes you’d expect from any other episode of South Park.

From a critical perspective – this is an almost passable c-level version of the show. it tries to create a lovable new character in the form of a prompt created AI generating pig. The inability to create a lovable new mascot is definitely part of the humor – but in general, the established characters are so spot on that you don’t worry about a new “Poochie” being generated – just ancillary characters needed for the final shows story to function. The pacing is a little off – as the episode drags on you begin to notice loops in dialogue while the AI attempts to pad for time – and there are a few story threads that would have lead somewhere in a stronger episode written by the creative force behind the original.

From the perspective of a creator – it is a level of “will this put me out of a job” scary.

The short answer is that in some ways the game has changed. We don’t NEED people to generate certain kinds of writing – but the way the Simulation is structured requires a lot of human intervention before a full story could be generated. For a well documented IP like Star Wars creating self-insert fan fiction wouldn’t be too hard a prospect, tons is known about the lore of every character, and you could even generate your own new “Legends” content. For new worlds – are there the financial incentives to create them in the first place?

I’m running out of time today before work and want to talk more about this – so expect more thoughts and feelings about AI generated art and a move towards a holodeck future.

Further Reading

https://www.thesimulation.co/show-1

To Infinity and Beyond: Showrunner Agents in
Multi-Agent Simulations – An in depth look at the science behind the making of a multi-agent simulation. In brief this system generates images and audio based on individual characters managed by a higher level AI. Developed by Fable Studios.