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Darren Aronofsky used to be a director who made interesting, if sometimes polarizing, films like Black Swan<\/em>, Mother!<\/em>, Noah<\/em>, and The Wrestler<\/em>. But it seems like a safe bet that people won\u2019t need to debate whether Aronofsky\u2019s new project is any good. Because anyone with eyes can see that it looks like low-effort AI slop. To put it another way, it looks like absolute dogshit.<\/p>\n Aronofsky is producing a new short-form series with his AI production company Primordial Soup titled \u201cOn This Day\u2026 1776,\u201d according to the Hollywood Reporter. The series uses tech from Google DeepMind to create short videos about the Revolutionary War, published on the YouTube channel for Time magazine. In 2018, Salesforce founder Marc Benioff bought Time, and the cloud software giant is sponsoring this monstrosity of a series.<\/p>\n The series uses human voice actors who belong to the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), which is clearly an attempt to tamp down on the inevitable backlash from both inside and outside Hollywood. Folks inside the movie and TV industry have fiercely pushed back against the use of AI to replace the skilled artists and actors who create the media we watch. That concern obviously comes from a place of self-interest because nobody wants to be pushed out of a job. But they also care about the quality of the work being produced. And there\u2019s also been a revolt among the average consumer, people who\u2019ve been inundated with the lowest-grade AI garbage imaginable. It\u2019s really everywhere now.<\/p>\n The first episode, titled \u201cThe Flag,\u201d is three-and-a-half minutes long and attempts to tell the story of George Washington raising the Continental Union Flag in Somerville, Massachusetts. It offers nothing compelling in the way of narrative. It\u2019s the kind of thing that you\u2019d skip over as a cut-scene in a particularly bad video game.<\/p>\n