TCL to "heavily promote" original short films with gen AI animation, characters.
A shot from The Slug movie.
A shot from TCL's original short movie The Slug. Credit: TCLtvplus/YouTube
Advertising has become a focal point of TV software. We’re seeing companies that sell TV sets be increasingly interested in leveraging TV operating systems (OSes) for ads and tracking. This has led to bold new strategies, like an adtech firm launching a TV OS and ads on TV screensavers.
With new short films set to debut on its free streaming service tomorrow, TV-maker TCL is positing a new approach to monetizing TV owners and to film and TV production that sees reduced costs through reliance on generative AI and targeted ads.
TCL's five short films are part of a company initiative to get people more accustomed to movies and TV shows made with generative AI. The movies will “be promoted and featured prominently on” TCL's free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) service, TCLtv+, TCL announced in November. TCLtv+has hundreds of FAST channels and comes on TCL-brand TVs using various OSes, including Google TV and Roku OS.
Some of the movies have real actors. You may even recognize some, (like Kellita Smith, who played Bernie Mac’s wife, Wanda, on The Bernie Mac Show). Others feature characters made through generative AI. All the films use generative AI for special effects and/or animations and took 12 weeks to make, 404 Media, which attended a screening of the movies, reported today. AI tools used include ComfyUI, Nuke, and Runway, 404 reported. However, all of the TCL short movies were written, directed, and scored by real humans (again, including by people you may be familiar with). At the screening, Chris Regina, TCL’s chief content officer for North America, told attendees that “over 50 animators, editors, effects artists, professional researchers, [and] scientists” worked on the movies.
I've shared the movies below for you to judge for yourself, but as a spoiler, you can imagine the quality of short films made to promote a service that was created for targeted ads and that use generative AI for fast, affordable content creation. AI-generated videos are expected to improve, but it's yet to be seen if a TV brand like TCL will commit to finding the best and most natural ways to use generative AI for video production. Currently, TCL's movies demonstrate the limits of AI-generated video, such as odd background imagery and heavy use of narration that can distract from badly synced audio.
But TCL and the creatives behind its films argue that this doesn’t necessarily relegate these movies to a subpar content category. Speaking to 404 about continuity errors that the publication deemed “distracting,” TCL’s Regina pointed to a "hyper focused critical eye" that he believes AI endures because people "don't want to embrace" AI. He added:
But there are just as many continuity errors in major live action film productions as there are in AI, and it’s probably easier to fix in AI than live action … whether you're making AI or doing live action, you still have to have enough eyeballs on it to catch the errors, and to think through it, and make those corrections. Whether it's an AI mistake or a human mistake, the continuity issues become laughter for social media.
Movies made for and by targeted ads and tracking
TCL plans to get more into original content, fueled by a dystopian strategy that seems largely built around minimizing costs and pushing ads. The movies will be “informed and funded by targeted advertising,”404 reported, citing TCL’s presentation. At the movies’ screening, Haohong Wang, TCL Research America's GM, reportedly told attendees that TCL movies and shows will “create a flywheel effect funded by two forces, advertising and AI.” He envisions a world where “Free Premium Originals” made with AI represent an era of film akin to the Silent Film Era or Golden Age of Hollywood.
TCL’s VP of content services and partnerships, Catherine Zhang, explained during the screening, per 404, that the goal of its original content is to get people used to passively watching movies and shows built with generative AI so TCL can make money from targeted ads.
"Data told us that our users don’t want to work that hard. Half of them don’t even change the channel,” she said, per 404.
But there’s a massive question around the ability for creative works to inspire human reactions, feelings, and experiences if they’re so blatantly fueled by ad and AI businesses. From a business perspective, TCL also faces challenges in convincing users that such content is enjoyable and fulfilling and isn’t detrimental to human creativity or jobs. The past year has brought negative backlash against films, TV programs, and commercials using—or suspected of using—generative AI.
But a company like TCL can save a lot of money and time by tapping generative AI for making original content. The new films are a way for TCLtv+ to attempt to pull eyeballs from bigger streaming services, like Netflix, without having to match the massive content budgets of those rivals, Regina told 404. The Chinese company also doesn’t have to worry about offending Hollywood, since it doesn’t have “that history” with it, Regina noted.
TCL's movies are a tocsin of the type of creative strategies we could see more of in the coming years, as content creators—which these days range from Hollywood and streaming services to TV OS operators and Chick-fil-A—seek to extrapolate as much ad money and user data as possible and entertain AI as a potential way to meet fiscal goals.
Amid beliefs that the Peak TV era that saw soaring content budgets create epics like Game of Thrones is over and the film industry being in flux, it may be disheartening for TV and film enthusiasts to imagine a world where more new shows and movies are created the way TCL made these short films. But as you can see below, this type of content is still far from dominating your TV or making serious production companies significant money.
As promised, here are the TCLtv+ short films:
Project Nexus
Sun DayS
The Audition
The Best Day of My Life
The Slug