The AI saved getting issues unsuitable. In a single shot, Tiggy regarded inexplicably jacked. In one other, his again was too dry. When the filmmaker instructed one piece of software program to present the again of Tiggy’s head “frog-like pores and skin,” it superimposed a complete frog’s face. The AI appeared to withstand depicting Tiggy bare, however Tiggy doesn’t put on garments. When the director requested for a “quick shirtless alien,” he obtained an error message, presumably due to the instrument’s safeguards. “As a result of I stated the phrase shirtless,” he guessed.
Narratives round AI are typically all-or-nothing: Both we’re cooked or it’s all hype. Watching the filmmaker work with AI software program—morning iced espresso in hand, brown hair and beard flippantly unkempt—is quirkier and fewer dramatic than all that. It’s like dropping in on pet college. The instruments preserve ignoring directions, making odd decisions, or veering completely off-course. However with care and persistence, he reins them in, ultimately coaxing out eight minutes of densely scripted authentic TV.
On this case, these eight minutes constituted the newest episode within the sci-fi cinematic universe that the filmmaker has created underneath the identify Neural Viz. The undertaking began in 2024 with a mockumentary net collection referred to as Unanswered Oddities, a talking-head TV present from a future the place the Earth is inhabited by creatures referred to as glurons, who interact in Historical Aliens–fashion hypothesis about their human predecessors. Every episode explores a distinct (and badly mispronounced) side of “hooman” civilization, like America, train, or the NFL. At first it appeared like a humorous, self-contained bit.
However then the universe, often known as the Monoverse, began to develop. Neural Viz churned out episodes of various collection from the identical gluron TV community, Monovision: a documentary cop present, a UFC-style present about combating bugs. Then got here podcasts, road interviews. Subplots and arcs began to emerge between movies, with romances forming, spiritual cults lurking within the background, and grainy archival footage surfacing in regards to the true circumstances that worn out humanity. Earlier than lengthy, the filmmaker had constructed a complete world with its personal language, characters, and lore, all of it made with AI.