Amazon quietly invests in Netflix in AI: The user pays to produce an animated series, who pays for it?

Amazon recently invested an undisclosed amount of money in the company behind the AI video platform Showrunner. Showrunner is an emerging video content platform that focuses on user-generated AI content. The idea is to make people pay for their own “television” by using a generating AI tool.

Imagine, for a little bit of money, fill in a few keywords, and then AI automatically produces an animated short play that sounds sci-fi and easy. Showrunner’s nickname is “Netflix for the AI world”, yet such an unsuspected, new platform, while ambitious, is not very promising in the current market environment, even its CEO Edward Saatchi, in an interview with The Panorama magazine, “may not be needed at all, nor will it succeed”.

Although the CEO is a little “black”, it is clear that Amazon, rich and rich, feels that this is a good thing and voluntarily becomes a “bullhead”. According to various media reports, the Amazon has invested an undisclosed amount in Showrunner. Showrunner was created by a small start-up company called Fable (about a dozen people), co-founded by Sachs, who had previously focused on developing VR content for Oculus.

Showrunner is still in the testing phase and users can use the platform ‘ s AI tools to try to produce two plays. One, called Exit Valley, mimics The Home of Misery, is a sarcasm of Silicon Valley Technology, and the other is a sci-fi love comedy about a husband and wife fighting in Ikea who accidentally crosses the world.

In Fable’s Discord group, early-testing users are playing with pleasure and are generating inexplicable content through hints. For example, the British punk comedian Ali G. met former US President Biden and asked him, “Do you want to buy a foot map of a hot girl I know?” Or maybe Joe Logan and Trump are arguing over the April list.

However, the content generated by AI’s “self-righteousness” appears to be quite lively, and the effect actually delivered is difficult to tell. These are hard, incomprehensible, non-viable, web-breathed, brutal jiggling. In particular, there are numerous ways of “getting fun” on the Internet today, and it is probably one of the most interesting options for “Ai generation of weird beans” on Showrunner.

Despite the pessimism expressed on the mouth of Edward Sachs, he also stressed that “the point is not now”. The CEO appears to have greater ambition, and he drew a large cake (at least for the time being) for the moderator in his “Circulatory” interview: “The Ai version of Toys’ General Mobilization is not just a cheap toy. Our idea is it’ll be fun! There are millions of new scenes created by fans, all of which ultimately belong to Disney.”

In Edward Sachs’ vision, users continue to share hints, improve each other, and quickly repeat content, making Showrunner more interactive than a video game, rather than a rigid television or YouTube video.

Fable plans to charge a monthly fee to users to use these AI tools to generate the drama. Part of the money is to be allocated to content copyrighters, such as Disney, who are negotiating. The platform was also said to have set up a fence to try to make the drama produced by AI barely visible (at least to maintain basic logical consistency) and to avoid naked violations.

However, the future prospects of the Platform remain unclear. Look at what’s now being created in the “hothouse” style, you can see the source of AI’s “learning”. Hollywood giants like Disney, the strongest law department in the North, and Fox are not used to you, and they have jointly prosecuted other AI companies for illegal use of their IPs. Showrunner wants to talk to the giants about the mandate, while keeping the hands of the users in check, the difficulty is clear.

The appearance of Showrunner once again pushed the fanaticism, myths and potential legal risks of “AI Generating Content” into the spotlight. How long can Amazon investments burn? Will users be willing to pay for these “AI content”? Will Disneyers hand over a paper petition? The dream of the “AllAi” director, I am afraid, will end up as it begins with “no success”.