It’s no secret that Netflix is fond of generative AI, having already used the tech in a few of its presentations. A new report from The Verge suggests that this will continue. But it’ll be shorter, animated, and, probably, vertical. INKubater is a new studio inside the streaming platform that will focus on… well, gen-AI slop.
About the best news is that the studio is still hiring, suggesting that INKubator isn’t ready to start mass-producing vertical brainrot for Netflix yet. Less positive is the studio’s ambition to graduate from short- to long-form content. AI-created movie-length products? Who would watch that?
Wait, Netflix isn’t already writing films with AI?
According to the report (and one of its job listings), INKubator will focus on “creating animated shorts and specials using experimental GenAI-native production pipelines.” That sounds like generative AI will be involved in creation, not just in managing humans to work more effectively.
What the studio’s output will eventually look like remains a mystery. Netflix has yet to make anything like an official announcement, though it won’t shut up about using AI in everything. Going fully generated, even as an experiment, sounds like something the streaming platform would do.
Time will tell whether Netflix and its “next-generation, creative-led, GenAI-native animation studio” has what it takes to create something approaching creative. We’ve obviously got doubts, but we also don’t have eyes inside INKubator. Perhaps it’ll be awesome. Possibly, it’ll suck. But we’ll have to wait until the studio finishes hiring the people it needs to prompt the AI systems that do all the ‘work’.
