Darren Aranofsky's AI-animated show about the AAMEREEDD revolution is a true horror

Darren Aranofsky's "On This Day… 1776" is a forthcoming AI-generated TV series featuring short narrative stories about the War of American Independence. The voices are human actors, so it may be considered as animation. Even so, it's extremely uncanny and mostly interesting as an example of the sort of thing AI bros on Twitter declare will completely replace humans immediately ("Hollywood is cooked!") while repulsing almost everyone who watches it.

I love how it plays to AI's obvious weaknesses by calling for period language and manners in informal settings and lingering on faces—the cold lifeless eyes!—as if something marvelous has been achieved in doing so. Which it has, technically, like watching the best animatronics in the world. Just watch the scene below of Ben Franklin and Thomas Paine having a conversation! It's like watching Data and Lore discuss the humans.

You don't have the be an avowed AI hater to be impressed without lifeless and unwatchable this is.

AmericanTruckSongs10 (@ethangach.bsky.social) 2026-01-29T19:34:27.861Z

The musical score is freakishly old-fashioned (compare the theme from the scary 1970s BBC quiz show Mastermind), which heightens the strangeness of it all.

I like how Jason Grinblat describes it, a map of the technology's dead ends.