A US company says it has cracked the formula for making an episode of South Park using artificial intelligence – and it allows users to be the star of the show. Fable Simulation has created an AI tool that can create brief original episodes of the cartoon. It animates, it does the voices, it does the editing," the company's chief executive, Edward Saatchi, told the GamesBeat website. The tool, called AI Showrunner, allows users to enter a one- or two-sentence prompt that then generates an episode, and can create a character based on the user's own looks and voice. Generative AI, the catch-all term for tech systems that produce convincing text and images from prompts, has gripped the public imagination since the launch of ChatGPT in November. It has also played a part in Hollywood actors joining writers on the picket lines over wages, technology and how to divide the profits of the digital streaming era. "We did the South Park episode as an example and for research to show generative TV.

It was just another day in South Park. The kids were making fun of each other on the playground, while the parents were all doing their best to maintain their sanity in the small Colorado town. And then there was me, a tech journalist going door-to-door warning about the impending AI apocalypse. No, I wasn't actually guest starring on the long-running TV series -- I was thrust into an episode entirely produced by the Showrunner AI model from The Simulation, the next iteration of the VR studio Fable. All it took was some audio of my voice (recorded during a call with The Simulation's CEO Edward Saatchi), a picture and a two-sentence prompt to produce the episode.

South Park viewers were sent scrambling to unplug their Alexa and Google Home devices last night, after the show's 21st season premiere had their smart assistants setting alarms, creating shopping lists, and spewing obscenities. During an episode which saw the characters shouting commands at the cartoon versions of the devices, viewers flocked to Twitter to reveal that their own smart speakers had been triggered, too. Social media has erupted with the hilarious stories of Amazon Alexa and Google Home owners whose assistants were set off by the episode, with many even claiming they'd been left with a shopping list that included'hairy b*lls.' South Park viewers were sent scrambling to unplug their Alexa and Google Home devices last night, after the show's 21st season premiere had their smart assistants setting alarms, creating shopping lists, and spewing obscenities Google Home is continually listening for commands. Google says nothing gets passed back to them until the speakers hear the keywords'Hey Google' or'OK, Google'.