Roku's 24/7 AI Slop Channel Is Even Worse Than Expected (engadget.com)
- Reference: 0185459080
- News link: https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/26/09/06/0633216/rokus-247-ai-slop-channel-is-even-worse-than-expected
- Source link: https://www.engadget.com/2245485/roku-tv-channel-ai-slop-free-fairground/
> "AI-generated" can make it sound as though someone typed a sentence into a machine and came back five minutes later to find a finished movie. Fairground's catalog shows why that description can be too simple. Take Lost Garden: The Awakening of the Lantern Knight . According to its Fairground page, creator Frank Houbre wrote the world, characters, mythology, emotional arc and screenplay himself. AI tools were used mainly for animation and visual production, with other tools helping create voices and music before the episode was assembled in conventional video-editing software.
There's still one question, the article notes: "whether viewers actually want an AI-focused TV channel." More than 100 AI creators have contributed to the 24-hour slate of programming, although [2] Variety points out several of them were discovered on social media.
The channel was recently profiled in [3]an article by the Guardian . Its headline? "'Nightmare fodder': Roku's AI slop channel is even worse than expected." (And its subheading calls it "a 24/7 channel devoted to low-quality AI content for viewers sick of watching real people move...")
> What about people who hate plot and vision and the sight of people speaking convincing dialogue that synchronises perfectly with the movement of their lips? What about the people who just want to watch an unyielding torrent of eerily weightless nightmare fodder? Well, good news. Roku has finally caught up... Early reactions were, to put it mildly, not great. The Verge [4]compared it to eating from a trough, while Futurism [5]called it "bottom-of-the-barrel slop"...
>
> On the plus side, the channel is evidence that artificial intelligence has come on in leaps and bounds over the last couple of years... However, it is still awful. Categorically, catastrophically awful. The channel doesn't so much offer shows as a drifting dreamscape of bad ideas rendered as horribly as possible with no thought paid to scheduling. At one point on Wednesday, a shrill high-frequency anime gave way to a long and staid German-language short about Nazi bureaucracy. After that came a sort of Gladiator ripoff that had all the dynamism of an exhibit you'd see at the fourth-best museum on a poorly planned family holiday.
[1] https://www.engadget.com/2245485/roku-tv-channel-ai-slop-free-fairground/
[2] https://variety.com/2026/biz/news/ai-fairground-xumo-creator-fast-channel-1236824290/
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2026/aug/12/roku-ai-slop-fairground-creator-tv-channel
[4] https://www.theverge.com/entertainment/976939/roku-fairground-ai-fast-channel
[5] https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/roku-unleashes-24-7-ai-slop-channel
No shit (Score:2)
Roku, and everything it touches, is trash. Their hardware sucks. Their software sucks.
Re:No shit (Score:4, Informative)
Roku was recently bought by Fox Corporation, so Roku is even more trash than their usual "Roku is trash".
Re: (Score:2)
Well, that deal hasn't fully closed and gone through quite yet, but yes, Roku will get even worse than it already was.
Re: (Score:3)
Roku does suck. Personally, I just use it as a front-end to play my home media on the various TV's in the house (using Jellyfin as the back-end) along with occasional content from Amazon Prime. I've deleted all the junk channels they try to foist on customers. Yes, the hardware does kinda suck, but it's just "good enough" to excrete a 4k hdmi signal, pass through the audio to my receiver where needed, and the interface is "good enough" for my family to use it. I've also neutered most of the "phone home"
As expected (Score:2)
Early attempts always suck
The question is, will any of it ever be good?
My guess is that it might be possible, but it won't be easy.
Re: (Score:2)
It might be good eventually, but we need some fundamental breakthrough in artificial intelligence first, since we currently have no idea how to make computers understand storytelling, and that's certainly not going to happen before the LLM bubble bursts, since nobody is looking for fundamental breakthroughs in artificial intelligence at the moment.
Re: (Score:2)
It hasn't been long enough for that to be "obviously wrong". OTOH, and speaking as definitely NOT an expert in the field, their financing looks...suspicious.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not about the tools at all. The tools could be 100% flawless every time, it wouldn't matter. It's about the people using the tools.
When you make a big-budget film or TV show, you have hundreds if not thousands of people working on it. Even the writers room has many people (writers, showrunners, etc) who might object to bad writing/plotting, and above that you have directors, producers, creators, studio execs who might object, and even below that you have, say, actors who may at least say "This line so
Re: As expected (Score:2)
It's about the authors rather than GenAI.
Previous advances brought down costs and accelerated production, but things were still specifically deliberate choices by humans.
This stuff allows a mediocre short prompt generate significant chunks of content without human care.
The human care that serves to generally add quality now becomes an impediment to speed and volume of content.
You can still have that care applied with GenAI, but that gets drowned out by the low effort crap.
Re: (Score:2)
100% this.
Re: (Score:2)
If you do it with one prompt, then the skill is in the AI.
With the right treatment, even a moderately lousy idea can turn into a good, or at least decent, movie. The less control you give to the AI, the more the quality depends on the guy that controls it.
Also, please not that quality isn't that easy. Even some famous works of art were panned by both audiences and critics when they first came out. Basically, the didn't meet the expectations, because they were trying something new. (Of course, most thing
Wait until they will make you pay for this. (Score:2)
with no way to opt out.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe you're not aware of which line-items in your budget the tax is applied to. Maybe you feel that it's too small of a sum to care about. But you're definitely paying.
slop on TV? you don't say... (Score:3)
I haven't owned a TV in decades. My new gf has a Netflix subscription. I only now realized how much utter TRASH there is out there. So, for all I care: AI slop fits right in.
Re: slop on TV? you don't say... (Score:2)
I completely agree; I can't understand why anyone pays for any streaming service, especially with all the free content and "workarounds" available for anything that isn't free. Looking for anything worthwhile on Netflix is literally like seeking a needle in a haystack for me, and one seems to spend most of their time seeking rather than streaming. I also find it annoying when people talk about shows they watch, and the concept of binge watching is absolutely horrifying to me. I don't like the app to appear
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe don't pay for YouTube, as you're just supporting an evil company. Many of the independent creators on YouTube are also on [1]NebulaTV [nebula.tv]. Just a thought, You-Do-You, YMMV.
[1] https://nebula.tv/explore/videos
Re: slop on TV? you don't say... (Score:2)
I'm think we all support Google and various other evil corporations s directly or indirectly. Try avoiding big oil. Even intel has investments in Israel. Heck, I can't avoid paying federal income taxes and USA is bombing girls' schools. My kid complained when I cancelled the YouTube thing. My Gmail address is 22 years old and I don't care to clean it up, so I may pay for storage there as well. Yeah I'll do me.
Re: (Score:2)
On a scale of corporate evilness, while I certainly wouldn't put Google at the bottom, I'd hardly put them at the top either.
When people compare AI water use to golf (Score:3)
For those people who say AI datacentres water use is just a pittance of water use used to keep golf greens green, I'd like to remind you it's far more pleasant being struck by a golf ball than watching even 5 minutes of this shit.
Re: (Score:2)
I'd like to add that it's nicer if the view outside your window is of a golf course, and not a datacentre.
Re: When people compare AI water use to golf (Score:2)
I'd add that water for grass is released into the environment for natural reuse with no need for treatment.
Re: (Score:2)
Also, most of the (not remotely significant compared to agriculture) water consumption attributed to datacentres is actually attributed to the power production , not cooling. Which applies to all electricity consumers.
Re: (Score:2)
Considering all the fertilizers, insecticides, etc. they use on golf coursed it's not that they don't need to clean up the water they release, it's just that they don't.
Re: When people compare AI water use to golf (Score:2)
Good point. I'm no proponent of golf courses or even grass where it doesn't grow naturally without much water. Society as a whole uses water inequitably, generally to benefit the wealthy. California is low on water but somehow has water for vineyards.
TFA (Score:2)
[1]https://fairground.tv/watch [fairground.tv]
[1] https://fairground.tv/watch
in other news (Score:2)
there is a devoted fan.base, and they were mostly flat-earthers.
Repent! The end of the world is nigh!
AI generated (Score:2)
If it's a young Kylie Minogue wielding a sword, attacking a giant snake in the forest with most of her clothing removed then "Yay! AI!". Otherwise? Nah.
Re: (Score:2)
I take it you can't get that out of your head?
In a few years it'll be the only channel they need (Score:1)
...and it will feature better writing, acting and overall quality than anything by Hollywood, Netflix, etc. currently does.
That's not to say it's a future everyone wants, but it is the future.
Re: (Score:2)
IF what gp predicts happens, so "writing, acting and overall quality" will be better, enough people will watch
Re: In a few years it'll be the only channel they (Score:2)
Problem is that won't happen.
The fundamental issue is that a GenAI user that pumps out whatever the GenAI does without review will be tons faster than the GenAI user that actually cares, reviews, edits, and reworks the output.
This flips things upside down, someone with dedication under the traditional ways would produce more, now dedication and care become a liability. Accepting a bland paste of garbage from the AI is easier to produce content than trying to implement actual creative content.
Re: (Score:2)
I think your projection of future AI is based too strongly on current capabilities. But it WILL aim for the lowest common denominator.
OTOH, I find most movies to be unwatchable, so my judgement is biased. My tastes are definitely those of a minority. E.g., I hated what the movie did to "The Wizard of Oz", and especially the way it corrupted the ending.
Re: (Score:2)
Effort is not always correlated to quality. Hollywood has quite a few examples for that.
Re: (Score:3)
IMHO:
The good news is, gen AI lets anyone make a movie!
The bad news is, gen AI lets *ANYONE* make a movie.
Re: (Score:2)
The good news: You only have to watch the movies you want to see, not the ones others want to see.
Re: In a few years it'll be the only channel they (Score:2)
Content discovery is hard when drowning in crap content. Finding a needle in a haystack is rough.
Re: (Score:2)
Who is telling you what to watch? There's already practically boundless possibilities today, all on-demand.
Re: (Score:2)
The number of no-talent, no-effort guys emboldened to take a stab at stardom is going to way outweigh the number of undiscovered supergeniuses.
The ratio is so terribly lopsided that I'd be surprised if there ends up being one piece of content airing on this channel, ever, that is worth watching more than 5 minutes.