'Masks of the Illuminati' episode generator

                                    

James Joyce (the AI version) 

In honor of the publication of Straight Outta Dublin, Robert Rabinowitz, a friend of Eric Wagner, has developed an AI-powered Masks of the Illuminati Episode Generator, allowing visitors to generate an episode of a fictional streaming TV series. It's kind of amazing.

The idea is that the novel's three main characters, Albert Einstein, James Joyce and Aleister Crowley, appear in every episode, but people using the site can propose guest characters and an episode theme.

So I tried it, using Igor Stravinsky and Claude Debussy as the guest stars, and "modernist music" as the theme. (The Rite of Spring, Stravinsky's famous ballet piece, debuted in 1912). The site duly generated an episode, "The Unbearable Lightness of Dissonance." When a cursed composition threatens to unravel the fabric of reality, Einstein, Joyce, and Crowley must decode its chaotic melodies.

The website generated images of Stravinsky and Debussy, a story outline, snippets of dialogue and TV commercials, and I was allowed to save my episode. Here is the story outline:

1923, Paris. A new musical composition, purportedly by a deceased composer, sweeps through the city's avant-garde circles. Its influence is unsettling. Musicians experience fits of madness, audiences descend into violent frenzy, and reality itself seems to warp around performances. Stravinsky and Debussy, initially enthralled, find themselves plagued by inexplicable phenomena. Einstein, investigating reports of temporal anomalies coinciding with the music, recruits Joyce (for his linguistic genius) and Crowley (for his occult knowledge). They discover the composition is an encoded summoning ritual, designed to open a gateway to a chaotic dimension. The ritual's key lies in the music's inherently dissonant structure and the emotional energy generated by its listeners. The trio must decipher the score's occult mathematics and disrupt the performance before the gateway opens completely. Their investigation leads them through smoky jazz clubs, bizarre séances, and labyrinthine archives. Ultimately, they confront the composer's obsessive disciple, who is determined to complete the ritual, at the premiere of the cursed symphony. A battle of wits, occult knowledge, and, strangely, synchronized interpretive dance ensues. Using a counter-melody based on Einstein's theories of relativity, Joyce's stream-of-consciousness writing, and Crowley's disruptive magic, the trio neutralizes the composition, averting disaster, but leaving them forever changed by the experience.

The site appears to be a good example of creative use of AI.

Disclaimer: Robert Rabinowitz wants it known that this is a beta site, and it may be down from time to time.