AI has been generating an endless Seinfeld episode for more than a month now
Nothing, Forever is a computer-generated take on Seinfeld streaming eternally on Twitch
TV Features Seinfeld
Seinfeld has long inspired fan work, from the long-running @Seinfeld2000 Twitter account to video and audio remixes of every type. The only limiting factor in the endless production of these ideas is that they’re created by human beings who must eat, sleep, and use our fallible meat brains in order to think up and execute our Seinfeld-based projects.
No longer. Unconstrained by biology or good taste, an AI has been pumping out a seemingly infinite Seinfeld episode over on Twitch under the name Nothing, Forever.
As Vice’s Chloe Xiang writes, Nothing, Forever was launched on December 14th, 2022 and has been broadcasting since. In it, blocky, lo-poly versions of Jerry, Elaine, George, and Kramer hang out in a brightly colored, slightly reconfigured version of Jerry’s sitcom apartment, talking in clipped, robotic sentences. Sometimes the scene changes to show an exterior shot of the apartment building, Jerry performing stand-up, or a mock TV channel guide. There’s a laugh track punctuating lots of not-funny lines of GPT-3-generated dialogue.
Xiang spoke to Skyler Hartle, who co-created the show, and said the concept came from “this weird, very off-center kind of nonsensical, surreal art project” that was further developed using “machine learning, generative algorithms, and cloud services” over the years. Hartle and his collaborators created Nothing, Forever’s art and laugh track, but, as a co-creator wrote on Reddit, “everything else is generative, including: dialogue, speech, direction … shot length, scene length, etc.”
At the time of writing, Nothing, Forever showed Elaine and Kramer sitting on a couch, just having clipped into each other and melded into a strange new creature. The scene changed to show George talking to Elaine about a restaurant that won’t allow people to use ketchup on steak. “Rules, rules, there are always rules,” Elaine replies, prompting the laugh track. She recalls there being rules about trying to order a decaf coffee once in the past and the laughs play again. The pair then stand together in silence for a while, nary a synth bass slap or pop to end their hilarious bit. After a while, George sits down on the couch and Elaine slowly falls diagonally into a wall.
Hartle told Xiang that his team’s “grounding principle” was to try to “create a show that can generate entertaining content forever.” This sounds like an ominous threat to flesh and blood comedians and writers. But only until you tab back over to Nothing, Forever and hear digital Seinfeld delivering stand-up lines like, “I just don’t even have to help you later. I admit it. You gotta deliver it at the window and then stop,” and realize there’s still a long, long way to go before AI can deliver anything more impressive than a gussied-up version of that Seinfeld episode co-written by predictive text back in 2017.
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75 Comments
What’s the deeeeeeal with A.I.?
In a few more generations Seinfeld will be a religion. Temples, dietary laws, holy wars…the whole magillah.It will make exactly as much sense as the shit you grew up believing.
My favorite Seinfeld 2020’s content is the Sein Peaks account that overlays Twin Peaks music to Seinfeld clips.
Can someone do this with Steamed Hams?
Can we please stop teaching the robots the verisimilitude they will use to replace us after the revolution?
Would you put your brain in a robot body?
“So I’m at the doctor and they say I
have terminal cancer, but then they say it’s okay cause they’re gonna
put my brain in a robot body. And this is it! This is the robot body. You’re looking at it! Looks
just like my old body, but it’s a robot. And I tell you, it takes some
getting used to. I don’t eat anymore, so that’s weird. Cause you
get used to having dinner every day, right? So you go out and you get food, but but then when it’s time to eat, you remember ‘oh that’s right, I no longer have a stomach.’
I’ll tell you the weirdest part though, is that I’m pretty sure Jerry
Seinfeld is dead. Yeah, and I’m just a copy derived from his mental
patterns, programmed to THINK it’s Jerry Seinfeld. How do you explain
that to your parents? Imagine going over to their place for dinner and
going, ‘Mom, dad, just so you know, I’m not your son. I’m an identical
copy of your son, one who can never die. Your actual son, he’s dead, and he
didn’t even get a funeral. Could you pass the potato salad? Actually,
nevermind, I just remembered, I don’t eat.’”
What, no laser beam eyes? No crime fighting D-cups? No strength of 10 gorillas?
I’m not going to ask you to prove if you have two gator-penises.
Whats the deal with synths walking around as regular human beings?
I would do it now if I could.
Ok, but your robot body can only be 5′ tall.
Never mind.
Can I be an Adriene Barbobot?
With chainsaw hands?
I wouldn’t stress about robots replacing us when they can’t even be as funny as (checks notes) Jerry Seinfeld.
Make way for the Mitch Hedberg Robot!
I once bought a doughnut and the guy gave me a receipt for the doughnut. I thanked him and moved on. I needed that receipt.
I used to do complex binomial equations. I still do, but I used to as well.
you’re mistaken, this humor is meant for other robots.
Why? I think it’s time the robots had a crack at running things. Humans have done a pretty fucking terrible job.
The logical endpoint of anti-comedy, really.
Didn’t we used to say that about the real Seinfeld?
I guess there’s n danger of the AI becoming too self-aware and deciding humans are superfluous if this is the only dumb shit we’re using it for?
I mean, they could just look at the fact that we’re only using them for this dumb shit and become aware we’re superfluous without even becoming self-aware. You don’t need to be a genius to recognize stupidity. (Side note, what does that say about American voters?)
We’ll know it’s achieved sentience when it utters “Wait a minute. You fucking idiots created me?!”
Funny, that’s what my parents said when I was born.
“What is my purpose?”“you serve butter”
SMBC in a nutshell.
Will it be funny this time? I don’t know whether it’s because I took a dislike to the way Seinfeld speaks to (and about) coffee shop staff on his Getting Coffee show, but my very belated attempt to watch Seinfeld is not raising many laughs. I’m seriously wondering if it is a very funny show that I’m just biased against.
Even as an automotive enthusiast I refuse to watch that show, but didn’t know he’s an asshole to baristas. Completely unsurprising from one of the wealthiest people in Hollywood. Yeah, I never once understood the hype about his show. Is it still called dry humor when it isn’t funny?
Not all the time – but often enough to make me think he’s not a nice person. The worst are the ones where some perceived failure on the part of the wait staff leads to Seinfeld and his celebrity chum making snarky comments behind their back. And then broadcasting it to embarrass the relevant waiter in front of their friends, family and the world.
Yeah, people worth hundreds of millions of dollars broadcasting insults about service workers to millions of people? Firmly puts him in the asshole category!But “Hollywood Royalty” worth hundreds of millions of dollars degrading baristas while driving million dollar cars around LA seems as predictable and on brand as influencers with bitcoin riches being assholes on social media. I’ve seen interviews with Jerry where he seems to “know” that his show is the single funniest and greatest thing ever created that isn’t a Porsche. So none of that surprises me.
It isn’t what he says to coffee shop staff, it’s the fact that he always takes his shoes off before talking to them.
I’m halfway through my first Seinfeld run, and I’m right there with you. Like a lot of things people remember from when they were younger, it’s nowhere near as good as they think. I used to catch random episodes pretty often in syndication when I was in high school because they played after The Simpsons on UPN and I remember it being pretty funny, but not hilarious. Rewatching it now, it’s about the same, maybe a little less. It relies on a lot more slapstick than I thought.The big thing is that there are probably only five non-animated sitcoms from the 90s that were any good, and Seinfeld might well have been the best of them. It also certainly had a transformative effect on the genre itself. But the next decade brought at least half a dozen shows that blew it out of the water. A friend of mine recently told me that he thought Seinfeld was the greatest sitcom ever, and I told him it didn’t even crack my top 10. It’s just I Love Lucy for Gen X and some Boomers. Fondly recalled, and way out of its time.
. . . just I Love Lucy for Gen X . . .So, a transformative piece of genre work that seems schlocky and dated to modern eyes because everything that came after riffs on it to some extent?
Do you guys think It’s Always Sunny is funny?
Well, yeah. That’s what I said. Good comment/username synergy I guess on restating my point.
Except Lucy and her husband genuinely changed the entertainment industry and were trailblazers in a variety of ways. Seinfeld? Not so much.
It’s a show of its time. Like Friends, it has not aged especially well.
I mean…come on! It’s not like comedy has evolved beyond Seinfeld. Isn’t big bang theory still on tv? That’s a downright devolution in comedy from Seinfeld. Big bang theory would slot right in between Different Strokes and Benson.
If that. Yes, there’s crappy sitcoms now but that’s different from shows like Seinfeld and Friends that just seemed funnier then than watching them now. It isn’t always the case. I think The Bob Newhart Show and Cheers are examples of older comedy shows that are still pretty funny even watching them today.
I’ll still find an episode of Friends I’ve seen 3 times funnier than an episode of Seinfeld I’ve never seen before. And it was a real shock to get to an episode like The Chinese Restaurant knowing its reputation as a classic, and then seeing it and just thinking “what?”
What’s funny is Cheers is probably most similar to Seinfeld in that it’s mostly a hangout show where nothing in particular happens.
True. Although I guess I enjoy hanging out with the Cheers crew more than the Seinfeld one. Although like “Always Sunny”, part of the point of Seinfeld was that despite being the protagonists, the main characters weren’t necessarily nice people.
I thought they captured the self-involved New Yorker vibe very nicely, but it was always funny to see how the various random characters they came across were typically disgusted by their behavior.
I’ll be honest – I’ve had more genuine laugh out loud moments from BBT than Seinfeld.
It’s hilarious. The first two, maybe even three seasons are (like a lot of shows) finding its groove and hold up the least because they’re so fucking old. But once the show finds its voice and the actors break in their characters, I love revisiting it. It’s also a very specific type of humor that doesn’t appeal to everyone. It might just not be for you.
I’m halfway through season 4 and still waiting for it to raise more than an occasional smile. I’m quite liking the concept of them trying to pitch the show that they have actually made to NBC within the show, but other than that it feels very average to me.
That’s fair. It’s a show that’s been endlessly imitated, parodied, and cloned, and a lot of the topics that were considered edgy and taboo in the 90’s are tame today. If you didn’t watch it when it first aired, then there’s no nostalgia factor. I get it. Friends was a huge show that many people love, and I can’t stand it. Different strokes, different folks.Although FWIW my favorite seasons are probably the last two when Larry David left and the show leaned into slapstick, parody, and more experimental (for the show) humor. For some reason, that’s the stuff that has held up the best (IMO).
Wow, talk about “different strokes” indeed – those seasons are IMO the absolute worst dreck of the series: when the actors were all coasting and going OTT as a baseline, and hacks Mandel/Schaffer/Berg were cranking out formulaic product, writing the separate plots from their unison-climax backwards. “Zombie Seinfeld” seasons.
I know that I’m in the minority, but the faster pace of those last two seasons just vibe with my humor sensibilities. Almost like a pre-30 Rock.
As many have already stated, the early seasons of Seinfeld can often be very awkward and stilted—-to this day I’m not sure why anybody says “the early seasons are classic, then it kinda went downhill”.For me, the strongest seasons started around 4, and the episodes flowed smoothest around the end of the run (7,8,9).I think the big problem in the early seasons is how obvious Jerry has no idea how to act which leaves his line deliveries glaringly scene-breaking at times.He never became particularly “good” at acting, but the later seasons had some great line delivery by Jerry, as he embraced his terrible acting, and just hammed it up. Like the “phone call pretending to be somebody else” in the tractor story, or imitating Kramer/M.R. hilariously in the Chicken Roaster episode.Or my all time favorite episode “Serenity Now” where he hams it up advancing on George.
There’s a trope for this. Basically, it’s not as funny because everyone copied them and what they’re doing isn’t new and fresh anymore.https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeinfeldIsUnfunny
That may be true, but it doesn’t reflect my standpoint. I don’t think it’s not very good because it’s unoriginal. I think it’s not very good because it’s not very funny.
This particular application is a bit more novel and fun, but so far every single “will ai replace humans at _____?” has been a massive and (more unforgivably) boring failure.
I don’t know. It’s pretty fun to make sexy anime babes with Stable Diffusion and some artists seem to be pretty worried that it is going to take their jobs (even though it can’t draw hands worth shit)
can it draw feet? If so, Rob Liefeld might be in trouble
Well it can’t fucking do hands for shit, so probably not.
I dunno, this seems as funny as the real Seinfeld.
Missed opportunity on the title, as it should have been called The Nothing, Forever
I went ahead and went to the channel, where I witnessed the following.
George: (staring at a wall) I can’t believe I lost my car keys.Jerry: (staring at his refrigerator) Oh. Where did you last see them?(audience laughs uproariously at this for a good ten seconds.)
this got me:“Did you hear about this new restaurant that just opened? They only serve imaginary dishes.”“Whoa. What would that be like? Would all the dishes be invisible?”“They wouldn’t need menus. You would just have to close your eyes.”…. that was actually, um, kinda funny?
What the hell, that’s actually not bad. Like, if the real Seinfeld were like 30% more surreal it wouldn’t feel out of place.
Similar vibe:
Why is Jerry Guybrush Threepwood?
It makes no sense! Jerry has canonically said he doesn’t want to be a pirate, and that’s Threepwood’s whole deal!
Yama-hama. It’s fright night.
I’m sure its still funnier than at least 1/2 of current sitcoms
“Rules {Jerry!}, rules, there are always rules!” – ChatGPT messed up, that’s a George line all day.
All these edgy “hot takes” from the chatroom crowd about Seinfeld not being funny. I’m sorry your brains are broken.
Well at least the original show still hits ahaha
Some AI needs to generate an audience to watch that shit and think it’s good.
I asked ChatGPT:What would a third Charlie’s Angels movie be called, after Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle (2003)? ANSWER: A third Charlie’s Angels movie could potentially be titled “Charlie’s Angels: Global Impact” or “Charlie’s Angels: World Warriors” or some other similarly creative title.
I asked ChatGPT:Please wite me a brief funny scene between Buffy Summers and Rupert Giles.
Sure! Here’s a brief, humorous scene between Buffy Summers and Rupert Giles:(Buffy enters Giles’ office, looking confused)Buffy: Giles, I don’t understand this spell. It’s written in Latin and I took French.Giles: (sighing) Buffy, I’ve told you before, Latin is a crucial language for demon hunting.Buffy: (rolling her eyes) Yeah, yeah. I know, Giles. But can’t we just Google Translate it or something?Giles: (shocked) Buffy, I cannot believe you just suggested using technology to translate ancient magic!Buffy: (laughing) Sorry, Giles. I couldn’t resist.Giles: (chuckling) Well, I suppose I can make an exception this once. Let’s have a look.(Buffy and Giles huddle over the spell book, trying to decipher the Latin incantation. Suddenly, Buffy sneezes, causing Giles to jump.)Giles: (startled) Good heavens, Buffy! You nearly gave me a heart attack!Buffy: (giggling) Sorry, Giles. All this dust in here must be getting to me.Giles: (smiling) Well, I suppose we should take a break and grab a cup of tea.(Buffy and Giles share a smile before heading to the kitchen for a much-needed break from their demon-hunting duties.)