Roku Launches First 24/7 AI Channel, Critics Call It 'Nightmare Fodder'

Watching Roku's AI channel is like eating from a trough

The appeal of free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) channels has always been the way they make it easier to (re)discover classic films and series. But Roku's latest experiment in the FAST space has less to do with traditionally produced entertainment and is entirely focused on giving viewers access to a constant source of AI-generated content. This week, Roku added four new channels to its library of streamable programming. Along with dedicated feeds for old episodes of Mad TV, Whose Line Is It Anyway?, and a variety of Black sitcoms, the platform also debuted a 24/7 stream filled with projects from Colin Petrie-Norris' AI startup, Fairground. Partnering with Roku is a significant step up for Fairground, which launched in 2025 and is reportedly working on its own AI-generated adaptations of Robin Hood and Dracula. But watching the Fairground channel, you get the distinct sense that Roku hasn't really gotten all that much out of the deal aside from the ability to say that it's getting in on the gen AI craze. Like all FAST channels, Fairground AI Creator TV is filled with a curated selection of programming that you're meant to watch somewhat passively. While you can scrub forward and backward a few seconds, there's no way to choose exactly what kinds of videos the channel serves up. That might add a fun sense of discovery to the channel if it featured series and films that were actually riveting. But everything that I saw while watching for about an hour was more or less the same kind of short-form slop that text-to-video models have become known for. Aside from being produced with AI, there's no consistent theme or genre to any of Fairground's programming -- all of which is made by a selection of content creators who have partnered with the company. Some videos are clearly generated by models trained on footage ripped from professionally produced anime, while others just look like terrible "lifelike" CGI. Surprisingly, there were semi-cohesive narratives to some of what I watched. I could follow what was going on in a "live-action" horror about people destroying a demon by making fun of it, and I got the sense that a fantasy about Greek heroes might have been inspired by The Odyssey. You can tell from the videos' length and the way their audio is mixed that there was some degree of post-production editing. But the videos' general lack of visual polish makes it obvious that they were cobbled together from machine-generated clips rather than shots crafted by a human artist. And the overall shoddiness of Fairground's programming becomes especially apparent whenever the stream cuts to an ad -- this is a FAST channel -- for one of the traditionally produced movies and shows Roku offers. Fairground's website makes a point of emphasizing that it pays its content partners for their generations in addition to giving them an undisclosed share of the platform's revenue. There's no mention of which models are used to create Fairground's content or whether it secured rights to use whatever training data is in the mix. But Fairground does stress that its programming is designed for "the living room, not the feed," which says a lot about what kind of niche Petrie-Norris and his team are trying to carve out. Most AI production startups have framed themselves as being poised to revolutionize the entertainment industry with technologies that will render traditional production workflows obsolete. Generally, the "Hollywood is so cooked" set insists that AI will soon be able to churn out films and shows comparable to a major studio's, but that doesn't really seem like the approach Fairground is leaning into. Rather than trying to be just as good or better than regular programming, it feels like Fairground simply wants its content to exist in the same general space as stuff that people might intentionally go looking for. Apparently, Roku thinks Fairground's offerings are good enough to be platformed, which is depressing, but not altogether shocking as the company enters its Fox era. Fairgrounds' content isn't at all impressive, but its presence on Roku gives the startup a way to reach a massive audience of potential viewers. It's easy to imagine an AI company seeing a business opportunity in the "looking for something mindless to play in the background" crowd, but this stuff doesn't feel like something anyone would want to put on.

Roku's new AI channel is top of the slops: is this an important AI milestone or just "the cutting edge of AI slop"?

Roku launches Fairground AI, the first channel devoted solely to generative AI movies, shows, and shorts * Channel 300 brings you Fairground AI, 24/7 AI video * Critics have been harsh, calling the channel "slop" * Could this be a lawsuit waiting to happen? Roku has added four new channels to its Roku Channel collection: Mad TV, Retro Black Laughs, Whose Line Is It Anyway, and Fairground AI. That last one is a world first: it's the first free, ad-supported streaming TV channel dedicated exclusively to AI-generated content. Or as Futurism calls it, "an unending conveyor belt of AI slop." Fairground Entertainment says it's "a landmark moment in the distribution of AI Cinema, a groundbreaking new form of storytelling that merges cinematic production values with the creative possibilities of artificial intelligence." According to CEO Colin Petrie-Norris, it's a genuinely groundbreaking moment for AI Cinema. According to The Verge, it's "like eating from a trough." What are people saying about Fairground AI? That very much depends on which people you're reading. On X, AI fans and boosters are very excited, not least because you can upload your own GenAI videos in the hope of being featured on the channel. Fairground AI says it'll pay for that video. However, more cynical sorts aren't impressed. "That new Fairground AI channel on Roku is so bad, it makes North Korean propaganda shows look good," says PSYMAGE on X. "It's kind of must watch for a little while, if only to see the cutting edge of AI slop." Futurism isn't pulling any punches. "It broadcasts AI-generated abominations 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The only interruption to this slop flow state are intermittent ads -- which are also AI-generated. It sounds more like a concept for a sci-fi torture device than it does a source of genuine entertainment, but it is, unfortunately, real." While there are some interesting things being done by some of Fairground's creators, the AI videos being shared on X are attracting criticisms familiar to anyone who's seen much genAI video: dialog is bad and poorly delivered, cuts are incoherent, weird things happen on-screen, and the visuals are derivative. It's fair to say that if you're not a fan of genAI content, this channel isn't going to change your mind. But I think there's a more serious issue. We've just seen the AI music platform Suno lose a lawsuit over unauthorized and unpaid use of copyrighted content in its AI models' training data. By monetizing generative AI video that's likely to be from models trained on commercially released content, Fairground AI may find itself attracting attention from something more terrifying than any AI-generated monster: movie studios' lawyers. Thinking of buying a new TV? Try our TV size and model finder! You tell it how far you sit from your TV, we'll tell you what size to buy based on viewing angle advice from image quality experts, and we'll recommend our three top TVs at that size for different prices. Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds.

'Nightmare fodder': Roku's AI slop channel is even worse than expected

Fairground TV is a 24/7 channel devoted to low-quality AI content for viewers sick of watching real people move in ways that won't haunt you The appeal of Roku is that, whatever you happen to want to watch, there will almost certainly be a live channel for it. Just want to watch Little House on the Prairie? There's a channel for it. Just want to watch Duck Dynasty? There's a channel for that too. Purely want to watch nothing but local news from Wisconsin? Guess what: there's a channel for that too. But despite this wealth, a section of the population was still to see its needs fulfilled. What about people who hate plot and vision and the sight of people speaking convincing dialogue that synchronises perfectly with the movement of their lips? What about the people who just want to watch an unyielding torrent of eerily weightless nightmare fodder? Well, good news. Roku has finally caught up. It was reported last week that Roku launched the Fairground AI Creator TV channel, the first free, all-AI streaming channel that pulls content from roughly 100 AI creators around the world. Early reactions were, to put it mildly, not great. The Verge compared it to eating from a trough, while Futurism called it "bottom-of-the-barrel slop". In truth, you will not watch Fairground AI Creator TV, and that's sort of the point. This is television with vanishingly low production costs. Compare an hour of this cheap slop with, say, the tens of millions of dollars it takes to produce an episode of Stranger Things, and you'll soon understand why executives might find the prospect irresistible. In this landscape you don't need breakout hits, just enough stoned and curious students at 3am to turn a profit. That said, I have actually just spent a few hours watching Fairground AI Creator TV, more out of self-hatred than anything else, and it would appear that the early reviews are right. On the plus side, the channel is evidence that artificial intelligence has come on in leaps and bounds over the last couple of years. Had this been attempted in 2023, we would have had a 24/7 feed of mutant Will Smith choking down handfuls of writhing spaghetti, and everyone would have vomited themselves dry. Generally speaking, what Fairground has to offer is much better. However, it is still awful. Categorically, catastrophically awful. The channel doesn't so much offer shows as a drifting dreamscape of bad ideas rendered as horribly as possible with no thought paid to scheduling. At one point on Wednesday, a shrill high-frequency anime gave way to a long and staid German-language short about Nazi bureaucracy. After that came a sort of Gladiator ripoff that had all the dynamism of an exhibit you'd see at the fourth-best museum on a poorly planned family holiday. In fact, as an aside, there seems to be an awful lot of this. Switch on Fairground at any time of day and I'd estimate you are no more than 15 minutes away from seeing a witless, sepia historical drama of some description, full of craggy, burly men glowering at each other, dramatically lit by sunset regardless of which direction they're facing. There is so much of it that it worries me about the future of the medium. The promise of AI is that it allows limitless story potential, and yet the bulk of it ends up looking like what would happen if your dad lucked himself a job scheduling Sunday afternoons on ITV3. There are still horrible glitches to navigate - stray mouths that don't move in time with dialogue, impossible physics, one specific instance of a man trudging through snow while his feet bizarrely made a clip-cloppy hoof noise - but these are becoming less and less frequent as the technology improves. The bad news about this is that you're forced to concentrate on the storytelling ability of the people who made this. And you simply cannot. Because it - all of it, every last stinking second of every godawful film - is completely inert. It is devoid of weight, of life, of vision and wit. The channel just flatly sits there, impressed by itself despite being physically unable to hold anybody's attention. You may as well be watching a screensaver, a CD-Rom menu screen or a fridge. The hope is obviously that something like Fairground will be the future of entertainment, churning out muck for pennies while an entire strata of creatives go hungry. And who knows, one day it might achieve this. The technology is moving so quickly that it isn't impossible to see it eventually developing the capacity to convincingly entertain. But on the basis of what I've seen, that day is still a long way off. At one point, the channel cut away to a commercial for Roku's Dr Phil channel, and the sight of an actual flesh-and-blood human acting in an identifiably human way almost moved me to tears. And surely anything that makes you emotional about Dr Phil of all people doesn't deserve to exist.

Roku Unleashes 24/7 AI Slop Channel

Can't-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Roku is giving the masses what they never asked for: an unending conveyor belt of AI slop. Those exploring the mines of the free channels that Roku has to offer -- yes, there are people that actually tune in to them -- may have noticed a new one called "Fairground AI," which was quietly added earlier this week and spotted by Cord Cutters News. It broadcasts AI-generated abominations 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The only interruption to this slop flow state are intermittent ads -- which are also AI-generated. It sounds more like a concept for a sci-fi torture device than it does a source of genuine entertainment, but it is, unfortunately, real. Some Roku users took notice of the channel, grimly joking on social media that the "future of entertainment is here." In one clip that gives an idea of the bottom-of-the-barrel slop that it's force feeding viewers, we see an AI movie that's apparently meant to be some sort of medieval drama, only with laggy physics that makes it look like it takes place on the Moon. If there is a plot, it's masterfully hidden underneath the bizarre way it cuts to different scenes, not to mention dialog that's delivered with the cadence and awkward pauses of a mid-2000s video game cutscene. No one blinks when they talk. There's also classic cases of AI-mangled imagery. At point, some grunt manning the castle wall whips out a weapon that is an incomprehensible fusion of crossbow and rifle, and fires. When it does, the arrow -- not a bolt -- travels backward onto the bizarre chimera of a weapon. Our guess is that this was not an intentional homage to Christopher Nolan's 2020 time travel clunker "Tenet." "Finally, AI can unleash the creative potential of people who can't write, don't understand pacing or transitions, are unfamiliar with human facial expressions, etc," one observer joked. "Shame they didn't use the 'with good acting' prompt," jeered another. Imagine this low quality content, only on a constant loop. When we tuned in on a whim, the first thing we saw was a giant cosmic octopus smashing together spaceships, which was intercut with the destruction being wreaked by another huge octopus on a sci-fi city, while a futuristic ninja heroine runs from the carnage amid crowds of uncanny humans and grotesque aliens. Fairground AI's creator, Colin Petrie-Norris Fairground, teased its launch last week, calling it the first fully ad-supported streaming TV channel dedicated to AI content. According to Variety, the AI content is made by creators that Petrie-Norris found on social media, including Kelly Boesch, Kavan the Kid's Phantom X Studio, filmmaker Ryan Phillips, Wonder Studios and Massive Studios. If you aren't familiar with any of those names, consider it a good thing. At the time of the interview, Petrie-Norris didn't reveal what platforms would be distributing his channel, but promised "massive reach." He also promised that the "gorgeous things" it'd be showing would be far removed the terrible AI slop you see on social media because of their attention to story details, per Variety. The evidence collected by our eyeballs suggests otherwise.

AI Just Got Its First 24/7 TV Channel | PYMNTS.com

The channel pulls programming from more than 100 AI creators worldwide, with the lineup programmed by Petrie-Norris and his team in the vein of a traditional TV schedule, including programs slotted into primetime blocks and specials timed to events like Halloween, Variety reported. Named contributors include Kelly Boesch, a Los Angeles-based AI visual artist with roughly 4 million social media followers who delivered a TED Talk on AI and creativity in April, along with Kavan the Kid's Phantom X Studio, filmmaker Ryan Phillips, Wonder Studios and Massive Studios, the company's announcement said. The programming, rated TV-14, spans science fiction, drama, animation, true crime and comedy, alongside AI-generated adaptations of public-domain properties including Dracula and Robin Hood. The Reviews Are Brutal, but the Math Still Works Early reviews are rough. Boing Boing described a medieval drama with "laggy physics that makes it look like it takes place on the Moon," dialogue delivered "with the cadence and awkward pauses of a mid-2000s video game cutscene," and characters who never blink when they talk. Futurism called the channel an "AI slop channel" broadcasting "abominations" around the clock. Fairground, in contrast, markets its output as "premium" television rather than addressing the quality gap critics describe. That disagreement over quality may be beside the point for how the channel actually makes money. A FAST channel's economics do not depend on any single piece of content becoming a hit. They depend on filling enough hours with content cheap enough to produce that even modest ad rates against a large volume of inventory turn a profit, a model that rewards volume over any individual show's quality in a way traditional television licensing never did. AI production removes almost all of the the marginal cost of adding another hour of programming, because generating a new episode does not require hiring a cast, renting a set or paying a production crew the way conventional television does. Distribution Matters More Than the Content Does What makes Fairground's launch notable is not the content itself but where it landed. Roku reaches more than 100 million global streaming households. Meanwhile, Fox Corporation agreed in June to acquire Roku for $22 billion in enterprise value, the companies said in a joint statement. Getting a channel onto Roku's live guide puts AI-generated video in front of a connected-TV audience at a scale no social platform algorithm can replicate on its own. That distribution test is happening at a moment when the entertainment industry is already contending with AI on multiple fronts. Toy maker Hasbro announced on June 3 that it would build AI-powered versions of its own characters through a new studio called Sixth Wall, citing the unauthorized AI use of its intellectual property elsewhere as the reason. A fully AI-generated film, "Dreams of Violets," premiered at the Tribeca Festival on June 10, the first time a major film festival accepted a full-length, live-action feature made entirely with AI into its official lineup. Whether Fairground's specific improves enough to hold an audience is a separate question. The bigger one is whether AI content, cheap enough to produce and distributed widely enough, can fill the enormous volume of ad-supported television inventory that traditional production was never able to scale to meet. For all PYMNTS AI and digital transformation coverage, subscribe to the daily AI and Digital Transformation Newsletters.