Did Darren Aronofsky's AI Revolutionary War series keep coming out. The one they announced back in January? Meant to follow the events of 1776 in real time? Big announcements but literally no talk about it as it neared July 4th?
Whoops: this project from a famed auteur that was hyped up as the unstoppable future of storytelling appears to have flamed out into a series of videos with clickbait thumbnails that get one to two thousand views. They're not even branded with the series' name in the title anymore; only TIME's On This Day....1776 playlist says they're part of a series.
Oh my god this was spun as a epic prestige project making history come to life. Their Fourth of July video was a cheap-looking comedy skit with a side of Epic Rap Battles of History. This is from Darren Aronofsky and Time Magazine.
“This project is a glimpse at what thoughtful, creative, artist-led use of AI can look like — not replacing craft, but expanding what’s possible and allowing storytellers to go places they simply couldn’t before,” said Ben Bitonti, president of Time Studios.
This was given a large amount of hooplah when it was announced. It was going to be a prestige miniseries, dramatizing history with a realism and immediacy that's only possible by hiring actors. Which they did, this is AI but has human voice overs, so you're hearing real human voices coming out of uncanny faces whose lips don't match what they're saying. So much better
(The initial pitch here - that AI could help create an epic period piece at a low budget, could conjure lavish sets and sprawling armies with a few button presses - seems a bit moot now that it's being used to generate videos that a Youtube comedian could film in one afternoon for twenty bucks.)
Anyway it appears they gave up entirely on the core premise of the series after the views sharply declined to under 100,000 views, then under 50,000, and finally under 10,000. And now they make random videos where it's King George but he's anime
The unhinged clickbait retool has attracted some attention - an article in CNET, and uhhhh I thought I found other articles but they were all reposts and AI summaries of the CNET article - but no real viewership. The "real time" thing only lasted a few episodes, as the release schedule started to slip and the show - incapable of doing the weekly episodes a TV show or Youtube channel could do, despite this series being about proving AI could do exactly that - went on a month long hiatus before returning. But new episodes are getting only a thousand or two views and a dozen comments, none complementary.
I wonder if the company involved is even disappointed; they're open about it being an experiment, a "proof of concept" though God knows what they're trying to prove by swerving a stultifying "what if we made old textbooks about George Washington chopping down cherry trees AI" prestige historical drama into a wacky Epic Rap Battles knockoff. It's like all of those brand experiences in the metaverse: a project announced with a great deal of power behind it, that was then abandoned to linger in obscurity because the press releases matter & the final product doesn't. In fact, it's better if the public doesn't watch it.
This kind of thing is common with AI projects. Take Tilly Norwood, the AI actress who hasn't...acted in anything? And who existed in the public sphere as That AI Actress for two years, and whose first ever film was announced...to be in early development...last week. Will it be given a push if it ever comes out, or will it be left to rot because only the idea of having made a film starring Tilly Norwood matters?
Or, say, AI music, which doesn't care about making a song people want to listen to, they care about being able to say they made a chart. But charts are easily gamed - conservatives have been getting their dumb rap songs to technically chart for years now by buying copies en masse or using unpopular metrics like iTunes sales and hoping people fudge the distinction.
When they released that AI country song, it didn't even sniff the country charts, but it did top the Country Digital Sales Charts through its own creators buying enough copies for it to chart. It's no coincidence that the first AI song to hit the Billboard charts hit the Hot Gospel Songs chart the highest, because well, how much does it take to hit the Gospel charts in 2026? You have no hope of scratching the pop charts, but Billboard has a lot of charts. Because the song doesn't matter, having a product people like and want doesn't matter, only the initial media attention matters.
