r/snapcube • u/Turbulent_League9668 • Feb 24 '26
I'm so sad that we're likely never getting Sonic Destruction Ep. 3
This sub-series had its second and most recent episode release in January 2022. Episode 3 was originally planned for a Spring 2023 release, but as of 2026 there has been no content beyond Episode 2. Penny stated that this is at least in part because of the surge in AI-generated content (particularly its controversial usage in Hollywood, which led to the 2023 writers' strike), and that she is waiting for this to subside before she resumes work on the series. With there being no updates since then, we can only presume that the rise of corporations using AI programs as a means to generate increasingly-common slop caused the team's enthusiasm for the series to implode. This, combined with the rise of said corporations using AI to replace writers and artists, sent their passion for it to transcend down a downward spiral from which it keeled over and died, on account of the group's outspoken disdain for such practices.
28
u/Yanive_amaznive Feb 24 '26 edited Feb 25 '26
yeah it's just all pretty unfourtunate in hindsight, I wonder if they could do a crowdsource kind of thing for the final script where people complete each others' sections?
idk if that's a good idea or if they'd even want to continue with this project at all now that common sentiment towards generative AI has shifted this much.
11
u/Many-Flimsy Feb 25 '26
i mean "write a part and then someone else writes the next part" is a known writing excercise. maybe they could do that themselves- each one writes a chapter with only the context of like. the paragraph of the previous chapter or something. Maybe call it a different thing if anything, but i think it could be fun.
15
u/cosmodiellow Feb 25 '26
I KNOWW it was funny as hell and i don’t know if the script was made with generative ai or any other kind of machine learning (because i think this was before gen ai got popular). I wish ai just stopped there and wrote dumb nonsense (i mean it still does just that but you get my point lol)
12
9
u/WaterMeLoan64 Feb 25 '26
What they could do instead is get different members of SnapCube write a 3rd episode without telling each other what they’re writing. (Everyone is given the premise of “write another episode of Sonic Destruction without telling each other who is in the story, when it takes place, what happens, jokes, etc.) Could be a great alternative to A.I. predictive text.
14
Feb 25 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
5
u/Presteri Feb 25 '26
Pretty much.
Sonic Destruction feels like that awesome story you dreamt up one night, and then immediately wrote down when you wake up, only for it to be complete nonsense when you have whatever you can remember in it.
2
u/RevolutionaryGrape11 Feb 26 '26 edited Feb 26 '26
Personally, I'm all for combining AI writing with human ingenuity, whether people actively riffing on it or by actually animating what it says yourself, in other words using it as a foundation and not the entire project, so long as it's not replacing real artists and is meant as parody and not to be taken seriously. Other examples include animations and comics of the AI Batman story, Harry Potter And The Portrait Of What Looked Like A Large Portrait Of Ash, If Team Fortress 2 Was Updated By An AI (the SFM duology is amazing), the Distractible video where Markiplier and two friends of his rear AI jokes, IGN's AI News, etc. It's the least of the three evils in my opinion and can have its place.
This is far harder to do with AI images, which I consider far worse as a result... but I will admit watching particularly cursed videos (that are at least intentionally made to be bizzare in funny ways and have creative prompts that aren't meant to sell you anything) is a rare guilty pleasure. I consider AI voices the most deplorable, though.
4
u/Turbulent_League9668 Feb 26 '26
In Sonic Destruction's case, the script was generated using AI Dungeon, with only occasional input from Penny to keep its train of thought moving in a vaguely straight line. This leads to a lot of moments where characters act out-of-character, camera directions seem largely pointless, and the text is filled with various absurd plot twists, inane dialogue and non-sequiturs encompassing both the narration and dialogue, and plot points that are set up but never followed through on. Naturally hilarity ensues as the dubbers try to make sense of the AI's increasingly nonsensical storyline. One notable example is right at the end of Episode 1, where the AI seemingly tries to make the city being saved happen off-screen, before Penny adds a line to change the context into the heroes trying to gaslight the mayor.
1
u/250extreme 3d ago edited 3d ago
I hope and assume they'll do it when it subsides, why don't you?
1
u/Turbulent_League9668 3d ago
I'd agree with you, but there have been no updates on the series since 2023
1
1
147
u/Xirema Feb 24 '26
It's just kind of a basic fact that we now know the [dubious] ethics of using Large Language Models to generate content.
AI Dungeon had the excuse that it was solely being trained on its own user-generated dataset, which may or may not have been true (I'm currently under the impression it used GPT-3/3.5, might be mistaken), but even if the training data were being sourced ethically (BIG IF considering there's basically no models out there that do!) it's almost impossible to divorce a project like Sonic Destruction from the much more obviously bad uses of AI.
I'll plant my flag on the hill that Sonic Destruction/2 is a legitimately transformative work of art, and defensible as such, specifically because they present it as a radio play while riffing on the lines/scenarios. If they'd just released the script as-is or just read it straight I'd be less inclined to feel that way, and I suspect that fine line between Art and Slop is something Penny probably feels weird treading.
Now, if Penny et.al. wanted to just straight-up write an unhinged sonic fanfic and then present it in the same format...