Amazon Invests In 'Netflix of AI' Start-Up Fable, Which Lets You Make Your Own TV Shows

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Variety: Edward Saatchi isn't totally sure people will flock to Showrunner, the new AI-generated TV show service his company is launching publicly this week. But he has a vote of confidence from Amazon, which has invested in Fable, Saatchi's San Francisco-based start-up. The amount of Amazon's funding in Fable isn't being disclosed. The money is going toward building out Showrunner, which Fable has hyped as the 'Netflix of AI': a service that lets you type in a few words to create scenes -- or entire episodes -- of a TV show, either from scratch or based on an existing story-world someone else has created.

Fable is launching Showrunner to let users tinker with the animation-focused generative-AI system, following several months in a closed alpha test with 10,000 users. Initially, Showrunner will be free to use but eventually the company plans to charge creators $10-$20 per month for credits allowing them to create hundreds of TV scenes, Saatchi said. Viewing Showrunner-generated content will be free, and anyone can share the AI video on YouTube or other third-party platforms. Fable's Showrunner public launch features two original 'shows' -- story worlds with characters users can steer into various narrative arcs. The first is 'Exit Valley,' described as 'a 'Family Guy'-style TV comedy set in 'Sim Francisco' satirizing the AI tech leaders Sam Altman, Elon Musk, et al.' The other is 'Everything Is Fine,' in which a husband and wife, going to Ikea, have a huge fight -- whereupon they're transported to a world where they're separated and have to find each other.

Showrunner is powered by Fable's proprietary AI model, SHOW-2. Last year, the company published a research paper on how it built the SHOW-1 model. As part of that, it released nine AI-generated episodes based on 'South Park.' The episodes, made without the permission of the 'South Park' creators, received more than 80 million views. (Saatchi said he was in touch with the 'South Park' team, who were reassured the IP wasn't being deployed commercially.) Out of the gate, Showrunner is focused on animated content because it requires much less processing power than realistic-looking live-action video scenes. Saatchi said Fable wants to stay out of the 'knife fight' among big AI companies like OpenAI, Google and Meta that are racing to create photorealistic content. 'If you're competing with Google, are you going to win?' Saatchi said. 'Our goal is to have the most creative models,' he said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.