Because selling TVs is no longer profitable in and of itself, TV makers now also sell data and ads. Earlier this year, TV manufacturer TCL announced they would be making content for their own ad-supported streaming channel, TCL+. As a result, Jason Koebler recently took in five “AI-powered” short films, as part of:

a pilot program designed to normalize AI movies and TV shows for an audience that it plans to monetize explicitly with targeted advertising and whose internal data suggests that the people who watch its free television streaming network are too lazy to change the channel. I know this is the plan because TCL’s executives just told the audience that this is the plan.

I watched a couple of these, and all I can say is that you really should not. They are bad, at times unwatchably so. Parts that were done by humans, such as the writing, are low quality, but the AI special effects are worse.

If this lazy drivel is in any way the future of cinema, it will be a very sad future indeed.