For Kerrigan, discovering generative AI apps felt like unlocking new powers. “The first time you start to see those weird creatures talking and whatnot, it is pretty mind-blowing,” he says. He felt like the meme of the guy standing in the corner at the party watching everyone dance and thinking to himself, They don’t know.
On Reddit, users were impressed by Neural Viz’s decision to lean into the idiosyncrasies, and even the flaws, of AI. Kerrigan got props from other creators too, who speculated about the identity of the artist behind the channel. “I thought he was Mike Judge hiding under a pseudonym,” says Zack London, who creates AI videos under the moniker Gossip Goblin and has over a million followers on Instagram.
Encouraged by the initial response, Kerrigan decided to make more episodes, but he had no idea where it was going. “There was no plan,” he says, so he decided to keep his identity secret. Kerrigan experimented with new formats, driven by his knack for genre satire and a desire to keep himself interested. He created The Cop Files, an X-Files meets Cops spinoff series, in which a detective investigates Tiggy’s disappearance; later came Human Hunters, a parody of Ghost Hunters.
The series also evolved with technology. With new generative AI apps dropping frequently, Kerrigan was intent on trying as many as possible. (Using a new piece of software early can help attract tech-curious viewers.) When he first started, he would record snippets of dialog—that is, recite lines into his microphone—and the AI would roughly match the mouth flaps of the characters to the spoken words as best it could, adding some basic facial movements. This gave Kerrigan some command over performances, but not a lot. Then, in October, Runway released its motion capture tool, Act-One. Now he could act out lines in front of his computer’s camera and the software would map his delivery—both voice and facial movements—onto the model of the character. This gave him much more control over the characters’ look and behavior. It also made the content more him than ever. (On the other hand, the characters started to seem more uniformly him, at least to my eye. Kerrigan says he’d like to hire other actors to diversify the performances, but for now it’s easier to play every part himself.)