TJ Walker breaks down Non Player Combat, the first fully AI-generated reality show, which is riddled with visual glitches like fused teeth and warped backgrounds. He argues AI shortcuts reveal creative emptiness now, but warns the technology will improve fast enough to displace human reality stars and let teenagers create worldwide hits.
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When AI reality TV becomes a warning, not entertainment. Metro critic Tom Percival reviewed a new show called Non Player Combat, the first fully AI generated reality show. And he calls it a disaster. The series features six AI contestants on a deadly island. But instead of an imaginative spectacle, Percival finds incoherence, ponytails changing between shots, teeth fuse into a mega tooth, backgrounds warp and dialogue sounds like off brand reality show cliches. Percival argues that AI should expand creativity, not flatten it. Instead, the show looks cheap, generic and shockingly dull. It demonstrates not the potential of AI but the creative emptiness of using it as a shortcut. Okay, so what's the real message here? Non Player Combat, AI reality show and apparently is awful. Guess what? It's the wave of future. Because a lot of people thought Survivor was awful and a lot of other reality TV shows are awful, but people like it. It's only a matter of time till these AI reality shows are tweaked and it's people hooked. And at that point you can forget regulator reality stars, they won't be needed. Let's dig a little bit deeper here. Now I got to confess, I apologize if I sound like a snob. I've never really been a reality TV fan, have I caught five minutes here or there, a Big Brother or the original MTV house show? Yeah, but I mean really like five minutes. So I don't really get it, but people love it, whether it's the Bachelor, any of these shows. People love reality shows, but they're not really reality. They are highly fabricated, highly edited, synthesized things. And I do think that AI will be able to do something captivates. And a lot of TV critics like the one I mentioned are going to say this is awful trash, it's garbage. And then you're going to see, oh, that show was number one in the ratings last week. I've been predicting for a while now that we're not that far away from the number one movie in the entire world. Being something a 17 year old creates entirely on a laptop in their bedroom using AI AI characters, AI script, AI music, whole thing. And it's not going to have great reviews from critics, but somehow it is going to captivate audiences worldwide and it's going to make some 17 year old tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars. And at that point every Hollywood producer in LA is going to go, my goose is cooked. Now it's one thing to say there's always going to be a demand for Meryl Streep, Martin Scorsese and fabulous actors, screenwriter directors and producers. But let's not kid ourselves. Most reality TV on network tv, cable TV is schlock. It's just stuff put out there to generate some attention from the mass. And if the people who are reality stars never get to be reality stars because they're replaced by AI, is that really going to upset anyone? Would the world be so much worse off if Amorosa never became famous? I don't think so. For that matter, the Apprentice itself was a reality show. Could a case be made that the world would be much better off if the host of the Apprentice had just stayed with his day job of being a real estate expert, a semi successful, often bankrupt real estate developer in New York City without getting on show? Maybe we would have all been a lot better off if that had been an AI driven show or created show and no actual real people ever got on it. So again, this, this is a new show that got out. It got really bad reviews, not creative. Teeth looked funny, ponytails flopping in and out. But be careful if you want to say, well, this AI stuff is just garbage. It gets better every day. The typical movie director, the typical screenwriter, the typical editor does not get better every day. AI is getting better every single day. It's an old expression, it's trite, you don't need to say it, but it's true. The AI you're using today is the worst you'll ever use in your life. It's better sometimes astronomically better, exponentially better. In any, if not any given day, any given week or month, it's just getting better and better and better. So we're not that far away from, you know, an interesting 17 year old coming up with a concept and having the whole thing written and produced by artificial intelligence. Do not judge a first effort of AI by this first show. Now, Mozart, allegedly or in Beethoven wrote, wrote symphonies when they were five years old. They weren't very good, but ultimately they became quite good. You can't judge any creation by the first few iterations. But unlike actual humans, the AI is getting better all the time. Now Will UB does raise the question, you know, every, every critic likes to think they're above it. I'm not saying I'm above it. Do we get to the point where you can get analysis of the news from an AI comparable to what I do, perhaps. I'm trying to prepare for that day, though. I have my own interactive AI video clone. It already can do public speaking training and media training and coach and critique your speeches, your interviews, coach. Could it do the same thing with news? I haven't figured out how to get it do that quite yet the way I would, but who knows? I'm going to keep an open mind for that. We will see.
