After being taken down because of an unscripted offensive joke, the alternative Seinfeld that relies on AI returns back to Twitch, with less interest.
AI is slowly, but surely, creeping into our lives. Although most people still prefer AI to be not included, most companies and heads of certain places push through to enable AI in their products or line of work in some capacity. Written AI is actually one of the best supporters out there when it comes to this topic as recently people started abusing writing AI tools to cover themselves for the things they cannot bother to sit down and write, and of course, it created a series of events where people are now playing “spot the generated content” game with each other.
I hate the AI bandwagon as much as the next guy, it could be very much onto your face like the NFTs or virtual currency, which ended up not taking off due to the obvious reasons of not being able to catch trends. However, AI does help people in some ways that allow it to be relevant. For me, it does not really matter as I rather keep my own craftsmanship to do my work and be original. The only part where I would let AI do work is now it would entertain me in certain places.
The current standing of AI could be considered as both very lacking and powerful enough to trick people into being real, however, I am interested in the entertainment and experimental part where AI is pushing the boundaries just because a person decided to do so. When the whole craze started to pick up, people would write down impossible commands and let the AI come up with a solution, while the answer was quite obviously not there.
The whole process of AI, being abused to not properly deliver what it is supposed to creates a cult where people are just asking for a photorealistic image of an overweight man, fighting with an alligator over a slice of pizza, which became a small fad recently. This sort of usage is completely fine, and I adore it when people push it even further, something like trying to copy a show and make it almost believable.
Enter “Nothing, Forever”, a take on the cult 90s American sitcom, Seinfeld filtered through an AI tool from OpenAI called GPT-3. Of course, not everything is the exact copy of the show, as the creators of the endless episode generator tried to avoid any resemblance of names and other key elements of the original series to not break copyright laws.
What made Nothing, Forever unique and impressive was how GPT-3 was capable of coming up with scripts that completely resembled an actual Seinfeld episode. Every character was pretty much up to their point with characteristics and responses, it felt like a well-structured AI showcase to keep people coming back, as it was infinitely looping with scripts with breaks to give time for AI to think. This meant that endless amounts of conversations could be created and keep people intact with the entertainment they are having.
Unless the AI model does a complete “Yikes!” moment to spice things up. As I said earlier, the AI of today is not very stable and can create situations that are not desirable by many. The fault of GPT-3 was let the main character, Larry, to make a joke about transgendered people. Watchmeforever was massively reported for only including 20 seconds of an offensive joke and it was completely gone in a day. The people behind the project, Mismatch Media, were quick to respond, saying Nothing, Forever might take some time to return, but it will eventually return nevertheless.
I personally loved the project as it mirrored everything from the original show one to one with no hiccups in between. The usual people count was around 1.5-2k during the day and it was fun to just open up to stream and watch them go about their day as usual, without being uninterrupted. Nothing, Forever disappeared in February this year and then I never, ever heard of it again. Until it came across on the main page of Twitch as I entered the streaming platform’s website. “You are telling me it’s still on?”, I said and rushed to see what my favorite not-Seinfeld characters were up to. Boy, I wish I didn’t.
The whole project seems to have changed its roots. Instead of having a comedian who resembles Jerry Seinfeld directly, we have another character who does blog-writing and has younger friends who hang around his flat. Some roles have also been changed, such as George being a female character and Elaine has been changed to a male one instead. The scenes are just distant from what they used to be and the worst part is how AI generates the the usual chitchat between the characters.
Since the new character, they call him Leo Borges this time around, cannot come up with witty jokes as he is not a comedian anymore, the topics are mostly philosophical rather than ordinary struggles of a New York City resident. Along with longer pauses and an eerie, vaporwave-y song in the background, the Nothing, Forever project seems to have lost its soul.
Since I expected some sort of redemption to bring back Nothing, Forever to be stronger than before, I decided to hang out in the stream, only to find only around 100 people watching and barely anyone talking about what was going on on the screen. It felt quite empty and I honestly know why.
In a recent coverage, it was stated that the AI models that ran around in the flat were stuck for four days straight as they all went the grab something from the refrigerator. No inputs, no change of scenery, and barely any interest in letting anyone know the AI has been stuck on no commands for four days.
Once one of the best mockups of best shows ever is now facing one of the big letdowns, and it is quite sad that we won’t be able to see the original Nothing, Forever returning anytime soon. I wish we could just see what I loved at the beginning instead of an altered version which does not even come close to the original. It is very tough to be a Seinfeld fan out there, that’s for sure.
