On the streaming platform, the animated series has been a hit in recent weeks. Almost entirely written and voiced by an artificial intelligence, “Nothing, Forever” is inspired by “Seinfield”, a famous sitcom from the 90s.
A pale copy? Rather a reinvention. In the series Nothing, Forever, the hero is called Larry. His friends with names similar to those of the cult soap opera of the 1990s Seinfield join him in his living room, like in the sitcom.
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As a reminder, Seinfield was a real ratings phenomenon from 1989 until the end of its broadcast in 1998. This sitcom chronicles the lives of four friends in New York, in particular Jerry Seinfeld, a stand-up comedian. The episodes mostly took place in his apartment. The series had the reputation of not talking about “nothing”, that is to say that it bounced off almost innocuous everyday situations, which could fuel 180 episodes with great success and since widely rebroadcast. Nothing, Forever is therefore inspired by it, except that it is not quite a “remake”, but an animated series, broadcast continuously 24 hours a day on the Twitch platform, and “imagined” by artificial intelligence.
The graphics are very pixelated and the movement of the characters evokes a video game from the early 90s, not very realistic. The voices are neutral, without emotion, and the dialogues are not yet a matter of comic genius. As in the sitcom, there are recorded laughs. Except that they do not necessarily fall at the appropriate times.
Inappropriate jokes about transsexuals
Since several weeks, Nothing, Forever fascinates tens of thousands of people. The creators, including a Microsoft engineer, use tools for machine learning: one to generate the texts, the other for the voices, another one for the animation. The set of algorithms is nicknamed “The Director” by the creators. It’s a technological performance and one can imagine that the more the technology advances, the more it will be able to reproduce the formulas and the predictable structure of a sitcom.
However, we can no longer watch Nothing, Forever Right now. The series was suspended for two weeks by Twitch, because, a few days ago, Larry made inappropriate jokes about transsexuals, comparing them to mental patients. The creators apologized: according to them, normally, the tool of machine learning has a strong content moderation system, but this tool has broken down. In order not to stop the broadcast, they then switched to another tool, less efficient in terms of moderation, and the text generated by artificial intelligence was not corrected. The sequel to the next episode, therefore.