/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25787622/tcl_ai_the_audition.png?w=696&resize=696,0&ssl=1 "TCL’s novel AI shorts range from cheesy comedy to existential horror")
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Earlier this year, TCL released a teaser Next stop Paris — an AI-animated tiny that looks like a Lifetime movie on steroids. The trailer had all the hallmarks of AI: characters that don’t move their mouths when they talk, lifeless expressions, and weird animation that makes it seem like the scenes are constantly vibrating.
I thought this might be the extent of TCL’s experimentation with AI movies, given the solid dose of criticism it received online. But boy was I wrong. TCL has unveiled five novel AI-generated tiny films that are also for its free streaming platform TCLtv Plus, and after Next stop Paris failure, simply put had to see what else she cooked.
Although the novel movies look a little better than that Next stop Parisserve as another reminder that AI-generated videos don’t exist yet, as we’ve seen with many video generation tools like Sora OpenAI. But in TCL’s case, it’s not just the AI that makes these videos bad.
Here are all five, ranked from passable (5) to “I wish I could unsee this” (1).
This futuristic tiny film has basically the same concept as Story by Ray Bradbury “The whole summer in one day.” It’s about a teenage girl living on a planet where the sun only rises every seven years, but only 10 people can see it at a time from the top of a building called “The Citadel.” Well, this girl wins the lottery to see the sun on the roof, but two bullies lock her in a room to prevent her from getting to the Citadel.
The AI-generated sequences become quite arduous to follow as he tries to escape through the sewers beneath the school. Somehow he contacts his dad (telepathically?), who happens to be a maintenance worker who knows the way to the underground. There she encounters purple rats on her way to some elevator(?) which turns into a rocket and launches her to the roof(?) where she can finally see the sun.
The voice acting in this movie isn’t bad, but the lack of facial expression was quite entertaining (just look this scene).
Nexus Project it’s more like a five-minute trailer than a tiny film, and unlike TCL’s other AI videos, this one is meant to feature animated characters rather than trying to make them look as human as possible. It begins like this: a man finds what appears to be a radioactive rock, then coordinates the arrest of a group of four teenagers, who then gain supernatural powers after the rock explodes outside their prison.
They apply their newfound powers to escape from prison and that’s where “to be continued.” I thought that maybe the facial expressions would be better, because the characters are not supposed to look fully human, but they are that’s definitely it there wasn’t case here. This film’s story is perhaps the most fascinating of all – the AI-generated animation and questionable voice acting just make it arduous to watch.
It’s a tiny documentary in which the actor playing Dr. Warren Brown uses artificial intelligence to tell the harrowing story of losing his leg after being trapped in an avalanche atop Cerro Castillo mountain in Chile – and it’s strenuous to tell which parts of that story (if any) ) really happened.