TCL rhymes with hell

This is a screenshot from an AI-generated movie titled “Sun Day”. I’m not going to show you the short movie itself which is freely available on YouTube, because I like you too much. It’s terrible. The plot is absurd, the acting is wooden and silly, the events in the plot are ridiculous and unbelievable, and everything is cobbled together with awkward and unlikely transitions. It’s bad. This is AI if AI is a smug little child with access to daddy’s high-tech video editing deck, but no background in literature or film or even Saturday morning cartoons.

It’s from an overly-generous but still critical review of a whole set of AI-generated movies. There is a company, TCL, that makes televisions, but plans to break into the streaming services market by creating a whole channel of nothing but AI-generated movies. They were premiering a set of films that were supposed to generate positive buzz for the whole idea, so you might assume they’d pick the very best representatives of the medium.

They’re all awful.

You don’t need to see them to realize that, though, because here’s the company spiel on why their service is so cool.

Before airing the short, AI-generated films, Haohong Wang, the general manager of TCL Research America, gave a presentation in which he explained that TCL’s AI movie and TV strategy would be informed and funded by targeted advertising, and that its content will “create a flywheel effect funded by two forces, advertising and AI.” He then pulled up a slide that suggested AI-generated “free premium originals” would be a “new era” of filmmaking alongside the Silent Film era, the Golden Age of Hollywood, etc.

Catherine Zhang, TCL’s vice president of content services and partnerships, then explained to the audience that TCL’s streaming strategy is to “offer a lean-back binge-watching experience” in which content passively washes over the people watching it. “Data told us that our users don’t want to work that hard,” she said. “Half of them don’t even change the channel.”

“We believe that CTV [connected TV] is the new cable,” she said. “With premium original content, precise ad-targeting capability, and an AI-powered, innovative engaging viewing experience, TCL’s content service will continue its double-digit growth next year.”

Oh my god. The company is driven by advertising and AI; they’re thrilled with their ad-targeting capability; they think double-digit growth is a good thing. This is a nightmare fueled by the bloviations of MBAs, without a hint of art or creativity anywhere.

Die, TCL, die.