Who the heck is Neural Viz? Only one of the coolest weirdest most awesomest AI artists out there. (Yes! Great AI art exists!) But seeing as it wasn’t me who discovered Neural Viz but my beloved fellow editor John Gravois, who then proceeded to assign and edit a Big Story about it (well, about him, but I’m already saying too much), I thought it’d be much more fun to have him introduce you. Take it away, John:
My teenage daughter despises AI. So it was out of character when, a few months ago, she got our family hooked on a video series made entirely with AI tools. The series appeared on a channel called Neural Viz, and it was reliably hilarious, cracked, and uncanny. What started with one or two videos from a mockumentary show called Unanswered Oddities just kept ballooning with ambition and braided storylines and film styles and lore. New episodes dropped every week or two, sending my two kids and me scurrying to the couch to watch them around the same screen. When my best friend from college visited from LA, he got hooked too.
According to the video credits, everything on the Neural Viz channel was being made by one unnamed person who seemed to have a bottomless appetite for late ’80s TV tropes and trying out new AI filmmaking software. And since I have a job that actually allows me to go solve my own mysteries in public, I got WIRED to agree that we should find out who's behind the internet’s first great AI cinematic universe. My college friend from LA predicted that our sleuthing would lead us to some “38-year old guy named Josh” who works in Hollywood—one of the many thousand TV ninjas who toil away with a slew of IMDb credits but paltry name recognition.
Well, it turns out Josh is 36, not 38. But the payoff of solving the mystery was otherwise a complete and delightful revelation. The age of AI hasn’t given us much great art yet, but Neural Viz is a glimpse of what’s possible—the very opposite of slop. And best of all, Josh is happy to show us how it’s done. |
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Confessions of a Viral AI Writer |
Story originally published in September 2023 |
While Neural Viz’s series, Unanswered Oddities, is undeniably singular, WIRED has been grappling with the value of AI artwork for years. In 2023, contributor Vauhini Vara wrote about her own experience using AI to create something truly great: her award-winning essay, Ghosts. Christopher’s and Vauhini’s stories, though appropriately skeptical, make the same argument: When used as a tool, by individuals dedicated to making art, not content, AI can be remarkably democratizing. It frees filmmakers from the burden of funding entire production teams. It frees writers from decades of not being able to find the right words, or simply never having enough time.
Vauhini, while critiquing the corporate origins of AI, makes an additional argument. We value literature because it conveys one person’s perspective—it delivers a viewpoint as unique and as intimately connected to human life as a fingerprint. It made me wonder, what if the value of film is not just the stories it conveys and the experience of consuming it, but the fact that its scenes were composed by directors, its actors morphed into aliens by makeup artists, or even, its CGI manipulated by VFX specialists? Isn’t the value of a creative work derived from the human hands that made it as much as the human eyes that consume it? What then, to make of Neural Viz? Send your thoughts to samantha_spengler@wired.com or comment below the article.
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“Worst, Bondi,” they begin. “2.) Bondi. 3.) Bondi. 4.) Bondi. 5.) HegsethRFKTulsiNoem.” |
As Luigi Mangione is being tried legally and in the court of public opinion, tensions are growing between his supporters pushing health care reform and those who believe he is innocent. |
Thinking about science and technology in terms of return on investment misses the point. Here’s what kids really need to know. |
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Last week, The Big Story featured Laura Bullard’s analysis of the philosophies fueling Peter Thiel’s recent lecture tour about the literal Antichrist. A lifelong conservative, Thiel’s beliefs have been heavily influenced by both René Girard and Nazi political theorist Carl Schmitt. Like many in his cohort, Thiel has also studied the work of neoconservative philosopher Leo Strauss. A newsletter subscriber wrote in to recommend some further reading on the subject: “Take a look at Shadia Drury's book on [Strauss’] political ideas to better understand the danger Thiel poses, as well as his contradictions. While Drury was criticized by those who protect and occlude Strauss' work, her analysis has held up over the years.”
Tell us about your favorite WIRED stories and magazine-related memories. Write to samantha_spengler@wired.com, and include “CLASSICS” in the subject line. |
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