A year after its announcement, Fable is launching Showrunner, a platform that lets anyone make TV-style animated content by writing prompts that are turned into shows by generative AI. The San Francisco company run by CEO Edward Saatchi with recruits from Oculus, Pixar and various AI startups is launching 10 shows that let users make their own episodes “from their couch,” waiting only minutes to see the finished result, according to Saatchi, who says a 15-word prompt is enough to generate 10- to 20-minute episodes. Saatchi is hoping Fable’s shows can garner an audience by self-publishing on Amazon Prime.

Among the first of Fable’s entries, “Exit Valley” is described by VentureBeat as “a harsh satire about Silicon Valley” and “a pretty brutal show, done in the ‘South Park’ style.” In fact, Fable achieved its initial notoriety as the company that debuted last year’s “South Park AI” generative AI series.

Both amateurs and “artists and seasoned filmmakers are applying their minds to the challenge of making great AI films,” VentureBeat writes, noting “some shows may be duds that feel like they were created in 15 seconds,” but others may have viral potential.

“If user contributions wind up winning via a jury selection, they can be eligible for IMDb credits and revenue sharing, if the show makes money,” VentureBeat reports. Roughly 100 people have participated so far, submitting scenes and episodes, and Fable is poised to open the floodgates on a waiting list of 50,000 hopefuls.

Saatchi calls Fable “the Netflix of AI,” according to Forbes, which describes the look of the company’s output as running the gamut “from anime to Pixar-style, to the cutout style of ‘South Park.’” Its production unit, formerly Fable Studio, is now called The Simulation.

“Maybe people are still upset about the last season of ‘Game of Thrones.’ Imagine if you could ask your AI to make a new ending that goes a different way and maybe even put yourself in there as a main character,” Fable suggests in a research paper abstract explaining its approach to generative content.

“Powerful LLMs such as GPT-4 were trained on a large corpus of TV show data which lets us believe that with the right guidance users will be able to rewrite entire seasons,” Fable continues, treading a fine line between fair use and protected IP.

Related:
Hollywood Nightmare? New Streaming Service Lets Viewers Create Their Own Shows Using AI, The Hollywood Reporter, 5/30/24
Showrunner Is a New Streaming Platform Filled with AI-Generated Content, Tubefilter, 5/31/24