Amazon’s Alexa Fund VC has made an investment in San Francisco-based startup Fable, which this week launched Showrunner, a generative AI model with an app that lets people create animated TV shows using text prompts. Showrunner has been in a closed alpha test involving about 10,000 users. Initially, Fable is making Showrunner available for free, but plans to eventually price it at $10-$20 monthly for credits enabling creation of TV-style content on Discord. The Showrunner-generated content will be shareable on social media sites including YouTube. Specific terms of Amazon’s investment have yet to be disclosed.

Variety reports “the money is going toward building out Showrunner, which Fable has hyped as the ‘Netflix of AI’: a service that lets you type in a few words to create scenes — or entire episodes — of a TV show, either from scratch or based on an existing story-world someone else has created.”

The Showrunner website includes examples of work generated using the app by a “growing community of creators on Discord.” The first show is “Exit Valley,” a dystopian satire set in “Sim Francisco.” Other selections include “Creepy Curiosities,” “North Pole” and “Kapitol Punishment.”

CEO Edward Saatchi announced Showrunner in 2023, claiming the tools can generate “more than just scripts and dialogue, but can animate, add vocal performances and edit full episodes based on something as basic as a two-sentence prompt.”

Users must set up a Discord account and request Showrunner access in order to use the content generation and delivery platform.

Today, “Saatchi’s hypothesis is that AI — instead of simply being a tool for cheaper special effects — represents a new entertainment medium, one that more closely resembles video games,” writes Variety.

GameBeat notes that “Showrunner received 80 million views for its ‘South Park’ AI episodes.” Some of the clips went viral, “and it caught Amazon’s attention.”

“‘Exit Valley’ is a ‘playable’ show where people can add themselves to scenes or make new scenes and episodes based on what they tell Showrunner,” explains The Wrap, adding that Fable claims ownership of all content generated by Showrunner.

“The terms of service will be very clear: the model provider owns everything that’s generated with the model, because it’s in the story world that they own,” Saatchi told The Wrap.