Artificial intelligence has made movies and music, and now it also has its own TV channel on popular streaming platform, the Roku Channel.
Roku did not publicly announce the addition of Fairground AI Creator TV — fully AI-generated content, 24/7, for free — on its streaming platform. Instead, Cord Cutters News was the first to report its inclusion in Roku's lineup.
But if the online backlash is any indication, viewers might be inclined to change the channel.
"Roku is giving the masses what they never asked for: an unending conveyor belt of AI slop," wrote Frank Landymore of Futurism, a science and technology news website.
Bradly Shankar of MobileSyrup, a Canadian tech news website, was just as critical.
"[Roku's] a nice option to have in this oversaturated and increasingly expensive streaming market. But enshittification comes for us all, and Roku is sadly no exception."
Fairground AI is a FAST channel, meaning a free, ad-supported streaming television.
There are about 200 FAST channels available on the Roku Channel in Canada, though Fairground AI is not currently one of them. The company has not said whether there are plans to bring the channel to Canada.
Roku is one of the world's most popular streaming companies. Fox reached an agreement to buy the company in a deal worth $22 billion US in June, giving it access to over 100 million global households using the platform.
The new channel comes amid a proliferation of AI-generated content. Earlier this year, Tribeca Festival became the first major film festival to feature an AI-generated movie. Toy giant Hasbro announced in June it would create AI-powered versions of its popular characters, citing unauthorized AI use of its intellectual property. Human web traffic is also declining against AI, according to internet data.
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Roku told CBC News Tuesday it provides "customers with a variety of streaming options," in response to an inquiry about the AI channel and the backlash.
The Roku Channel isn't Fairground AI's only platform — the company's website says it's slated to stream on five TV and FAST platforms starting this month.
On its website, Fairground AI calls its channel "the first FAST channel dedicated exclusively to AI-generated content."
