Tired of not being able to decide what to watch on TV? What if you just turned your brain completely off and let AI feed slop through your eyeballs and into your frontal cortex non-stop 24/7?

That may sound like the obese future from Wall-E, but I have to inform you it is already here.

Last week, The Roku Channel launched Fairground AI, a 24/7 channel that runs entirely on AI-generated content.

You get a nice mix of narrative shorts and commercials, all created for humans by our AI overlords.

It's the kind of mind-numbing stuff they forced Alex DeLarge to sit through in A Clockwork Orange, and now you have access to it in your own home.

Let's dive in.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

Does Anyone Actually Want This?

This is so interesting because I am not just using my Hollywood brain here; I have no idea who in the Western world wants to watch this stuff.
Every trend we see is people watching their old favorite shows over and over again or comfort movies.
But that doesn't account for Roku's plans to go global, or, at least, go far East to a market that dwarves America.

China’s short-form video ecosystem is currently undergoing a massive, AI-driven pivot:

  • Mass Production: More than 95% of the ~128,000 microdramas released in China last quarter were AI.
  • Explosive Viewership: In January, AI-generated short-form dramas captured 38% of the top 100 hits (up from just 7% a year prior), pulling in an astounding 2.55 billion views.
  • Synthetic Superstars: The Tilly Norwoods of China, "Qin Ling Yue" and "Lin Xi Yan" are already set to star in 60+ shorts.

The Future of the Living Room Screen

Is the West destined for what the East already views as commonplace?

Founder & CEO of Fairground Entertainment Colin Petrie-Norris said of the new Roku deal, “Cable and linear TV was the realm of the very well-financed. FAST disrupted that by doing away with retransmission fees and making it easier for smaller digital brands to launch their own 24/7 network. Generative AI offers that same democratization for storytellers.”

Now, these are all fancy words, but do people believe viewers will embrace them? I mean, OpenAI tried this, and their channel failed because no one was watching.

You can say China is usually ahead of us on tech, and this may be the case. Mostly because this stuff is cheap; it costs them virtually nothing to produce and put out into the world.

They want a world where we become desensitized enough to watch or create with it.

Right now, multiple people online are talking about the wonky physics of some shows and extra fingers or hands on characters, but even ardent haters like myself have to admit some of the tech is getting better, and right now there's enough scope to run a channel off it.

Even if I think that channel should be sent to Guantanamo to torture prisoners there.

Rolu is betting on it becoming popular enough to be good, which is interesting.

Summing It All Up

Whether AI shows and channels are embraced remains to be seen, but they are here, so they're worth talking about. I don't see Roku pulling a bunch of young creatives off the street to put new, diverse stories on the air using AI. So until that happens, I don't see an opportunity for many filmmakers.

But one thing is for certain: more will be on the way if this works.

Let me know what you think in the comments.

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