The use of generative AI in creative fields has turned into a flame war — a nightmare of meaningless and derivative AI slop that we’re seemingly unable to awaken from. The internet is being asphyxiated by incoherent AI-generated drivel as tech leaders continue to assure us that it’s the future we’ve always wanted.
Even Hollywood hasn’t been safe from the onslaught, despite some of the biggest names in the industry publicly excoriating use of the tech.
Now, noted director Darren Aronofsky — a renowned filmmaker behind films including “Requiem for a Dream,” “Black Swan,” and “The Fountain” — signed a partnership between his AI studio Primordial Soup and Salesforce, TIME Studios, and Google’s DeepMind for an almost entirely AI-generated drama series about the American Revolution titled “On This Day… 1776.”
The first two three-minute episodes are already available to watch on YouTube, but we can’t in good conscience recommend anybody to seek them out.
Even an early teaser trailer suffers from all of the usual drawbacks of the tech, from uncanny facial features to scrambled, illegible text.
Users were appalled at the tasteless result, accusing Aronofsky of relying on the tech as a gimmick and refusing to pay real actors — while exploiting existing art by regurgitating it through AI.
On This Day… 1776 | Official Trailer
The production appears to have little regard for historical accuracy, with historian Mateusz Fafinski noticing the AI bungling up the front page of the important 47-page pamphlet “Common Sense,” which was distributed by Thomas Paine to advocate for American independence prior to the Revolutionary War.
“Happy to see that there is no need to worry about the historical accuracy of new 1776 AI slop because it happens in the mystical land of Λamereedd,” Fafinski wrote in a post on Blusky, referring to the mangled letters visible in the series’ teaser.
Fafinski also pointed out that despite being fresh off the press, the pamphlets are already somehow “stained and foxed immediately after printing to look real and ‘old.'”
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