Since December, an episode of Seinfeld has been continuously streaming on Twitch, the dialogue allegedly created using ChatGPT.
Titled “Nothing, Forever,” the stream features vague approximations of the four main characters of Seinfeld, but the dialogue doesn’t match that of the actual show. “Nothing, Forever” is not funny, but it is weird. One of the creators, Skyler Hartle, told Vice that it started off as a “surreal art project,” but “generative media and generative AI just kind of took off in a crazy way over the past couple of years.”
People have been keeping track of the show’s progress on Twitter, and on Thursday someone posted a clip, claiming that the “Seinfeld AI is becoming self-aware this is not a drill.” In the scene, the Elaine character asks, “Why are we here?”
People noticed other odd details and existential musings, particularly that of the afterlife.
In the Vice interview, Hartle mused what this kind of content could mean for the future of streaming: “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.”
The Twitch page references Mismatch Media, “a media lab focused on creating experimental forms of television shows, video games, and more, through generative technologies, and other machine learning technologies.”
But at a time when current streamers are canceling anticipated series and deleting shows, disconnecting creators from their work and livelihoods, that sentiment rubbed people the wrong way. Also, do people want infinite seasons of a show?
People are apparently invested — as of Friday afternoon, the live stream chat is full of commenters and there are more than 10,000 people watching.
We reached out to the creators for comment via email.
