Twenty-five years after Seinfeld went off the air, it has "returned" in a strange and bizarre form.
"Nothing, Forever" is a sort of endless Seinfeld episode made by artificial intelligence, which first appeared on Twitch.tv back in December and has seemingly been running nonstop since.
This surreal and almost nightmarish video, deep in the uncanny valley, depicts the everyday life of four characters: Larry, Fred, Yvonne and Kakler, each of whom stands in for Seinfeld's main cast of Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer.
And just like those four, they spend their time talking about nothing. Just random trivial nonsense or stuff about their daily lives.
The script was made using the GPT-3 made by OpenAI, similar to the company's ChatGPT AI chatbot. Another company is behind making the voices of the characters.
The people behind this endless episode spoke out to international news outlets. According to Skyler Hartle of Mismatch Mewdia, who is one of the aforementioned people, it all started out as a "nonsensical, surreal art project," Vice reported.
The surreal, bizarre experience of AI-generated Seinfeld
So far, the result has been completely surreal. For example, as documented by an article in The Guardian, at one point, Larry and Fred are seen in their apartment bizarrely contorting their bodies. There, Fred, who is meant to represent George Costanza, tells his best friend about his new romantic partner.
"She different than any other girl I've ever dated," Fred said.
"Different how?" asked Larry, who is meant to represent Jerry.
Then we hear a loud prerecorded laugh track from the "audience."
Yes. As far as AI is concerned, this was a joke.
The different characters speak strangely and look overly serious. The episode is also full of long silences, just like an old Israeli movie.
Every now and then, Jerry Seinfeld's digital likeness can be seen next to a microphone in what seems to be a stand-up club.
In one of these segments, as documented by The Guardian, he says, "Have you ever had one of those days where no matter how hard you try, nothing goes your way? Yeah, we've all been there."
Fred later says he plans on writing a book about "How I managed to make it through the toughest times."
Larry responds: "You've certainly gone through a lot. It sounds like a great story. I'd certainly be interested in reading it when you’re finished."
"I watched 22 minutes of 'Nothing, Forever' to parallel the experience of a single episode of Seinfeld," journalist Matthew Cantor wrote in The Guardian. "I don't think comedy writers need to fear for their jobs just yet. I didn't laugh once."