AI Slop: Director Darren Aronofsky launches clip series “On This Day… 1776”
The renowned director has released a series of AI-generated clips on YouTube. User reactions are unanimous.
(Image: Primordial Soup)
Director Darren Aronofsky (Mother!, Caught Stealing) has released a series of AI-generated short clips about the US independence movement. The series “On This Day… 1776” has been appearing on the Time Studios YouTube channel since the end of January and consists of three to five-minute episodes, each intended to trace individual events from the revolutionary year 1776.
The project is produced by Aronofsky's company Primordial Soup. The visuals are entirely AI-generated, using several AI tools, including those from Google DeepMind. YouTube labels the videos concisely as “altered or synthetic content.” The voiceovers, however, come from real, SAG-AFTRA-organized voice actors – a response to the AI regulations negotiated by the union last year.
Videos by heise
In terms of content, the clips show loosely connected, sometimes photorealistic scenes of the revolution. The images appear quite photorealistic, but generic. Camera angles and editing give a confused impression. A coherent narrative or recognizable dramaturgy is lacking. Consequently, many reactions in the comments are critical, with users describing the videos as typical AI slop.
The project is financially supported by, among others, the software company Salesforce. Aronofsky sees the series as an experiment on how AI can be used in film production in the future – and how audiences react to such formats.
(hag)
