If you’re wishing for a Seinfeld reboot, we have the next best thing. There’s an AI-generated and nonsensical spoof of the ‘90s hit sitcom.
The show, Nothing, Forever, streams 24/7 on Twitch, and it’s just as absurd as it sounds.
“Nothing, Forever is a show about nothing, that happens forever. Kinda like popular sitcoms of the past, except that it never stops. Nothing, Forever is always on, runs 365 days of the year, and delivers new content every minute,” a statement on its site reads. “Everything you see, hear, or experience (with the exception of the artwork and laugh track) is always brand new content, generated via machine learning and AI algorithms.”
Nothing, Forever has developed a devoted cult following since it started streaming on Dec. 14, and has over 11,000 viewers as of this publication.
The show, which takes cues from its predecessor, centers on four friends named Larry, Yvonne, Fred, and Kakler. They frequently meet in Larry’s apartment to discuss the bizarre new things they have encountered outside.
Co-creators Skyler Hartle and Brian Habersberger used machine learning, generative algorithms, and cloud services to build the show. OpenAI’s GPT-3 language model powers the conversation, and the stream is only sporadically moderated by humans, according to Motherboard.
The duo set out to make a surrealist, never-ending television program; therefore it was only natural to model it after Seinfeld, which popularized the sitcom form.
“Seinfeld is famously the show about nothing. What could be more nothing than a robot, right?” Habersberger told TechCrunch. “And then even further with ‘Seinfeld,’ there was a period of 15 years or so where you could just turn on the TV, and if you flip through the channels, there’s a good chance it’s on, because it was syndicated […] So I was like, wait, now it can really be always on.”