My Little Pony, besides being an iconic children’s animated series, is also known for its fanbase of grown men known as ‘Bronies’. And now, someone – presumably from the ‘brony’ community – loves the series enough to sit down and create their very own version of My Little Pony, all with the help of artificial intelligence (AI).
As young children can only keyboard smash, we’re gonna assume that a ‘brony’ is responsible for a new AI-generated My Little Pony livestream on YouTube. The livestream isn’t just a single fan-made episode – the episode is seemingly never-ending, and its narrative develops according to comments left under the livestream. Teamwork is magic!
The video is made by an anonymous user named ‘blob’ from Spain. ‘Blob’ has only 52 subscribers and joined YouTube in October 2022. Zero videos, zero playlists, zero channels featured – a hint that they’re a YouTube lurker like many of us above the age of 18. More reason to suspect that the AI-generated My Little Pony is brony-made.
Livestream
The livestream discloses that it is purely a “non-commercial fan project” – aha, brony-made confirmed! “This AI-driven series crafts procedural plots and dialogues, creating a narrative inspired by the original work, following viewer suggestions.” Someone definitely watched Black Mirror’s Bandersnatch before making this.
To drive the plot forward, all the budding screenwriters – sorry, viewers have to do is start the comment with an exclamation mark. Then, follow it up with the character’s name, a general description of a scene, and said character’s line. A pretty simple prompt input, if you ask us.
The creator behind the livestream is also aware of AI’s tendency to ‘hallucinate’, and has added a disclaimer about it. “Due to the unpredictable nature of AI and viewer prompts, instances of offensive language, hate speech, slurs, violence, extreme adult content, and other morally unacceptable or antisocial content may occasionally appear.”
Oh. That explains why the video is age-restricted.
The herd of My Little Pony bros are tame, so far
At the time of writing, as many as six My Little Pony fans are having the time of their lives crafting a compelling story in the YouTube comments. Fortunately, comments under the livestream have been fairly safe for work so far, with fans eager to make Twilight Sparkle and Fluttershy contribute to life in Ponyville.
However, there was one comment that did reference the imploded Titanic submarine… let’s fast forward.
The livestream began 27th June, 2023, and is still going as we write this. With its six strong viewers, it doesn’t look like the AI-generated My Little Pony levels of popularity are going to fade anytime soon.
