GoKawiilI've been low-key obsessed with Darren Aronofsky's AI-drenched video project On This Day…1776 since it landed out of the blue on YouTube in late January.
As a narrative, the ongoing series of short videos tracks select events throughout the United States' birth year, when the outcome of the looming revolution was truly precarious. As a Hollywood-adjacent initiative, it's also meant to be a proving ground for what creative professionals might be able to accomplish with generative AI tools that are evolving by leaps and bounds.
Through the first half of 2026, and especially as we've closed in on the country's 250th anniversary on July 4, what has emerged has been an increasingly surreal blend of technical ambition, snapshot patriotism and a penchant for the grotesque.
It's that TV show that you're sure is the worst thing ever, but you can't stop hate-watching because you want to see what weird twist comes next. And some of it is truly bonkers.
Produced by Aronofsky's AI-centric Primordial Soup studio and promoted by Time Studios, On This Day…1776 drew a burst of media attention -- and backlash -- with the simultaneous debut of its first two episodes. People hated it simply because it was heavily AI-generated. The flaws in the execution were all too apparent. It was a betrayal of the humanity of Aronofsky's own films. As much as I tried to be open-minded, I couldn't help but sum it up as "a hellish broth of machine-driven AI slop and bad human choices."
For a while, it seemed like the criticism had been too much to bear and the project had been shelved. Time Studios had promised weekly episodes, but nearly a month went by before the third one dropped. (No splash -- it simply appeared on the YouTube page, as every episode has done since.)
On This Day...1776 serves up many encounters with a distinguished Gen. George Washington. His dream sequence is not one of them. Primordial Soup via YouTube/Screenshot by CNET
It seemed to have fallen off everyone's radar. The initial episode garnered 199,000 views -- not exactly a viral sensation, but not nothing. The four episodes from mid-May to mid-June each have under 2,000 views as of this writing.
For every episode since the start -- 11 so far, most well under five minutes long -- a handful of those views are mine.
Like I said, I'm obsessed. My compulsive viewing has centered on three things: whether the series could meet the weekly schedule (hard fail), how it presents the history (wacky, and getting wackier) and how the AI looks (often impressive, often dubious).
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