Jerry Seinfeld, trapped in algorithmically generated limbo
Seinfeld was famously described as “a show about nothing,” and that description has become something of a prophecy, as a bizarre, AI-generated Seinfeld episode has been streaming on Twitch for a full month, titled “Infinite Nothing.”
The never-ending episode is, as its title suggests, very much “about nothing,” as algorithmically animated Seinfeld characters wander aimlessly around their apartment, engaging in meandering, dreamlike conversations powered by OpenAI’s GPT-3 language model, with minimal human moderation.
In an interview with Vice, Skyler Hartle, the co-creator of “Nothing, Forever,” explained the thinking behind the project:
“The actual impetus for this was it originally started its life as this weird, very, off-center kind of nonsensical, surreal art project,” Hartle said. “But then we kind of worked over the years to bring it to this new place. And then, of course, generative media and generative AI just kind of took off in a crazy way over the past couple of years.”
“Aside from the artwork and the laugh track you’ll hear, everything else is generative, including: dialogue, speech, direction (camera cuts, character focus, shot length, scene length, etc), character movement, and music,” one of the creators wrote in a Reddit comment.
The result feels closer to David Lynch than Jerry Seinfeld, with the cast of characters seemingly trapped in AI limbo, always on the verge of setting up a joke, waiting for a punchline that never comes. An eerie, out-of-place laugh track imbues the AI’s clumsy conversations with a slightly sinister undertone.
The stream constantly cuts from the Seinfeld apartment to Jerry Seinfeld’s stand-up segments, again, algorithmically generated jokes (and honestly, they’re not that far removed from Jerry Seinfeld’s limp one-liners).
As an experiment in AI, it makes for an oddly fascinating watch, but the creators seem to have higher ambitions. Hartle went on to say: “As generative media gets better, we have this notion that at any point, you’re gonna be able to turn on the future equivalent of Netflix and watch a show perpetually, nonstop as much as you want. You don’t just have seven seasons of a show, you have seven hundred, or infinite seasons of a show that has fresh content whenever you want it. And so that became one of our grounding pillars.”
After watching the stream, creatives can likely rest easy that AI isn’t coming for their jobs, yet. The AI is absolutely incapable of writing witticisms, but it is inadvertently hilarious.
The AI-generated animation results in characters flailing around wildly, staring at walls and walking away while speaking to one another; it’s like watching a group of Sims spiral into collective insanity.
During my watch, Elaine told the gang about a “near miss” she had, after almost being hit by a guy on a bike. She went on to explain that the man wasn’t actually riding the bike, but pushing it down the street “like a puppy.”
This delightfully unhinged anecdote was followed by an awkward silence. Then, Kramer stood up, unprompted, and said to the gang, “Sounds like a plan. Lets go.”
No one moved.