Happy Thursday! I chatted with Close All Tabs about some of the viral online trends you may have seen over the past few weeks. Check it out here:

In today’s newsletter, an AI app for TV production, Sydney Sweeney’s American Eagle drama, Love Island USA’s JaNa and Kenny’s breakup, and more. Subscribe to the Yapper tier to read the full newsletter.

As a treat, some media I’m consuming that I want to recommend to you:

• To play: Date Everything

• To watch: Unreal: WWE

• To read: The Wedding People

The “Netflix of AI,” you say?

Fable Studio, which created Showrunner, a new “playable” AI-generated TV production service, has a new investor: Amazon. 

Fable has called the product the “Netflix of AI.” Users type in ideas for scenes for a new show or an existing show in the system. The series are predominantly done in an animated style. It seems to me like a mix of TV, AI-generated animations on YouTube, and the Sims. Creators will eventually be able to monetize on the platform.

Beyond the obvious question of what the AI was trained on, I always bristle at the idea of making creative work so frictionless. This is not to say I believe the arts should be gatekept or that people shouldn’t remix existing media. I just think people would benefit more from learning the actual craft than just rely on AI to animate, create, and produce. Creatives were not meant to speedrun art! 

As I’ve said before, some of you have not experienced the joie de vivre of learning a craft and it shows! People used to Photoshop, Premiere Pro, or even fan fiction their way into their favorite IP. It took real brain power and practice. 

I will be curious to see how this product fares as it becomes more available. I don’t think it would replace any animator, writer, or real showrunner’s job — and it seems like the company is not trying to do that. Still, the place that Fable Studio or Showrunner AI would hold in the industry is unclear.

Fable is in talks with major studios about licensing deals, which begs the question: Are the artists getting compensated for being the models for these AI tools? I suppose the deal you make when working for a place like Disney is that they own your creations. Still, I think there should be some sort of royalty system in place if this kind of licensing and training is becoming more commonplace.

Further reading: Amazon Invests in ‘Netflix of AI’ Start-Up Fable, Which Launches Showrunner: A Tool for User-Directed TV Shows - Variety

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