Uncanny Robot is an anthology audio drama created by Theresa Matsuura and Rich Pav. The start by taking a story prompt, and feeding them into different predictive text AIs. They then allow the AI to keep going, occasionally stepping in when it gets stuck in a rut, or if they otherwise don’t like the direction things are going. Then, Theresa and Rich record and narrate the insuring story. What laughs, insanity, and even touching moments, can an AI come up with? Uncanny Robot is here to find out.
This was another audio drama where I was requested to review by the creators. I was contacted over Reddit asking if I’d give Uncanny Robot a review. This was right around the time Arielle Nissenblatt (rhymes with this-and-that) did that Twitter tread introducing my fellow podcast critics and I to everyone on Twitter. I said yes, and here we are now.
So, a few things to discuss before we go forward. The first couple episodes were almost entirely AI driven, with minimal input from the humans. The primary AI used is Novel AI. Theresa and Rich originally wanted Uncanny Robot to be something that listeners could unwind and relax to. The AI insanity of the stories would be like an ASMR video, but in podcast form. However, they soon decided that this would prove too limiting for what they wanted Uncanny Robot to be. So, they started taking a more hands-on approach to the stories. I’m not sure what the exact percentage of human contributions to the later stories are, but defiantly much more than in the first two episodes. Each episode also includes an accompanying commentary episode. The first two episodes include the commentary along with the stories.
The use of AI also extends to other aspects of Uncanny Robot. All of the images and art work that accompany the episodes are all AI generated. Even the music is AI generated. Apparently, there’s some AI that can generate music scores, but it is very tricky to get something worthwhile out of it. Rich is quite adept at this, but it is certainly no small task.
I must also give a shout out to another podcast that Theresa and Rich work on. Uncanny Japan explores all that is weird from old Japan. Strange superstitions, folktales, cultural oddities, and interesting language quirks, and whatever else Theresa digs-up while researching for her novels and short stories. It is hosted by Theresa, who also does the research, while Rich handles the audio engineering and soundscaping. It isn’t an audio drama, or audio fiction per se, but I still greatly enjoy it. I would encourage everyone to give Uncanny Japan a listen. Well, after you listen to Uncanny Robot, of course. I should probably also mention that Theresa is a Bram Stoker Award nominated author. She has published short story collections such as The Carp-Faced Boy and Other Tales and A Robe of Feathers and Other Stories.
Okay, now that we’ve discussed all of that, let’s get into the episodes. Our first episode is a cheery little starter. You see, the theme of this episode is death. Oh, don’t worry, it is more lighthearted than it might sound. In our first story, titled “Memories of Death” a ghost recounts his childhood experiences with death. His parents died when he was only twelve, and his sister and cousin died not long after that. He began to contemplate his inevitable demise, and how death comes for us all sooner or later. Then, he took a faithful trip to his grandma’s house. He hears about murder on the radio, and in songs, and on television. The protagonist became obsessed with thinking about murder, and talking to everyone about murder, and he began to fear that he might be a murderer.
Some people wonder if it might only be a matter of time before AI get into the story writing business. Some people fear this might lead to human writers getting edged out of the market. Personally, I’m not losing any sleep over the matter. If these episodes are anything to go off of, AI has a long, long way to go before it can seriously challenge human writers. Still, AI are capable of producing some unintentionally hilarious results. I’ve certainly played around with enough predictive text algorithms. My favorite is InferKit. I learned about it, back when it was called Talk to Transformer, from the YouTube channel GrayStillPlays. He did a video where he made it write articles about Florida Man. I once made it attempt to recreate Percy Jackson’s Wikipedia article. I posted the result on the r/camphalfblood subreddit, if you are curious. I also had it try to recreate stories from Thomas the Tank Engine, and I’m still kicking myself for not saving the results.
I thought that “Memories of Death” was an excellent start for Uncanny Robot. We start off with a scene that is evocative of Spoon River Anthology. Then we get to the visit with Grandma, and the story goes completely off the rails. Of course, going off the rails is when the real fun starts. Let’s see, our protagonist is obsessed with murder, consumes large amounts of media centered around murder, constantly talks about murder, and fears that he might be a murderer? Well, I think that the answer is pretty obvious. The protagonist became a member of the true crime fandom. Though, it seems he got a little too into it, if he feared that he might be a murderer. Wait, he started worrying that he was a murderer when he was twelve, which was the age his parents, sister, and cousin died at…uh oh! That’s not good! There are some errors, continuity and otherwise, but that just adds to the charm and hilarity. For example, a man jumping off of a building is described as a murder. Uh, Mr. Robot, ever heard of suicide? Also, the protagonist hears about this on the radio, but then the story says that he and Grandma saw it on television.
“Memories of Death” is a great first offering from Uncanny Robot.
The second story is called “ You Remind Me of Someone.” Jake has recently become a vampire. It is cold and raining in the cemetery, and he is all alone. Then he sees his sister Rachel. She invites him into a nearby chapel. They talk about life and afterlife. Rachel reminds Jake of someone, but he can’t quite think who.
We all know that AI is capable of creating some great comedy stories. However, can I create something a bit more serious? It would seem that the answer is a tentative yes. Now, this story wasn’t anything groundbreaking or revolutionary. Still, for a story that was primarily written by an AI, it’s not half bad. Sure, there were a few goofs, as is to be expected from an AI-generated story. For example, Jake says that his sister Rachel reminds him of his sister Rachel. Not long after this we learn that Rachel is dead. It was almost like the story was trying to have this be a twist, but it didn’t quite know how to properly pull it off. Still, it could have been a lot worse, so I’m still impressed with how this story turned out. “You Remind Me of Someone” is a great second part for Uncanny Robot’s first episode.
Our second episode features the biographies of famous musicians, as written by AIs. The first story is titled “Elvis Lives.” As the title says, it takes place in a world where Elvis did not die in 1977 at the age of forty-two. We get to learn all sorts of fun facts about Elvis. For example, apparently, his birth name was Ralston Oliver Jones. He was named after his mother’s favorite singer, Billie Holiday. Speaking of his mother, she worked as a dancer at a strip club. Elvis changed his name to Elvis Aaron Presley when he was eight. His family moved to California when he was a teenager, and he attended UCLA. Elvis had a total of twenty-six marriages, and was divorced several times. In 1969, he got a sex change and became known as Pricilla Presley. This probably caused some confusion, as Elvis’ first wife was also named Pricilla.
I could go on, but this doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the sheer insanity of this story. The rules of reality really are out to lunch with this one. I loved absolutely every minute of this hilarious insanity. Oh, but we aren’t done yet. You see, our protagonist gets to meet Elvis in the present day. Elvis is a philanthropist who likes to help Black people. In fact, he plans to sell all White people into slavery to help Black people. He also wants to turn the protagonist into a Black genius. I guess Elvis is a reverse Clayton Bigsby; a White Black Supremacist, if you will. And he threatens to whip the protagonist if they don’t agree to become a Black genius. Kind of sending mixed signals there, Elvis. Also, I’m pretty sure that gender reassignment surgery is the correct term for what the story called a sex change. And come to think of it, the AI deadnamed Elvis, or should I say Pricilla, quite a bit. Of course, things would get a bit confusing if, among other things, the AI talked about how Pricilla Presley was the ex-wife of Pricilla Presley.
“Elvis Lives” is my absolute favorite story from Uncanny Robot. With “Memories of Death” in a respectable second place. Absolutely hilarious from start to finish. I loved every minute of it.
The second story in the episode is “Whatever Happened to Mr. Mojo Risin?” It follows an interview with the musician Jim Morrison. I’m less familiar with him than I am with Elvis. This story also had the misfortune of having to follow “Elvis Lives.” It was pretty much impossibly to top the insanity of its predecessor. So, I couldn’t really get into “Whatever Happened to Mr. Mojo Risin?” AI stories as always a mixed bag, and this on just didn’t click with me.
While we’re on the subject, the third episode is titled “Valentines Day with the Revenant Squad.” It is a love story set in a dystopian future. Unfortunately, I just couldn’t get into it. It wasn’t really bad, but just kind of meh. As such, we shall move right along.
Our fourth port of call is titled “Asteroid Arnie and the Mushiblooms.” The protagonist of this story gets to go on an adventure with the great space hero Asteroid Arnie. They must travel to an alternate version of Earth to save the Mushiblooms. Mushiblooms are cute little fuzzballs, and Asteroid Arnie is their only hope. So, grab your nucleic phaser, and hold on tight.
I was intrigued when I heard that this story would involve alternate universes. As many of you will know, alternate history is a big source of bread and butter for this blog. So, I was eager to see what the AI would come up with. Well, it’s turned out the AI wasn’t all that interested in alternate history. It seems that it wanted to write an episode of Rick and Morty instead. Still, we did get some fun alternate history tidbits. For example, the protagonist isn’t from our universe. They come from a world where Earth was destroyed in 1876 as a result of the American Civil War. We must presume that space travel, and space colonization, was invented much sooner than in our universe.
I should also note that this episode marks the point that Theresa and Rich started taking a more hands-on approach to the stories. I can definitely see that. The story was noticeably more cohesive than its predecessors. It still managed to still feel like it was written by an AI, which, of course, it was. This episode certainly had its moments, but I felt that everything didn’t quite come together as well as it could have.
The fifth episode is “Peppers and the Screaming Yoof: A True Crime Parody.” It begins in April of 1969. Four meddling kids, and their dog, are on their way back from Woodstock. They soon find themselves on a mysterious farm called the Screaming Yoof. As meddling kids are wont to do, they decide to snoop around and investigate the mystery.
This episode was released on April Fools’ Day. As such, I spent most of the episode trying to figure out what the trick was going to be. I thought that maybe it would turn out to have been written completely by the humans, with no AI input. This was before I listened to the companion episode, and learned about the change in how episodes are made. So, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop the whole time. I suppose the effect was a bit like Horse eBooks. It was this Twitter account that, as the name suggests, spammed quotes from various Russian ebooks about horses. Everyone assumed that it was an automated bot account. The quotes, non sequiturs that they were, almost worked as dada poetry. It was kind of amusing to think that a bot account had inadvertently created art. Well, as it turns out, it was not a bot account, there was a human running the Horse eBooks account the entire time.
Anyway, if you’ve ever wondered what Scooby-Doo would be like if it had swearing, overt drug references, and if Scooby was the antichrist, well, here you go. The Scooby analog is mentioned to have been raised by a cult called The Devil Dogs, but this doesn’t have much bearing on the plot. There’s one point where the characters encounter a turntable from the 1980s, which apparently happened before 1969. Theresa and Rich have said they intended this story to be a parody of true crime podcasts. I do get some hints of that, but Scooby-Doo is definitely the dominant flavor here. I admit that true crime podcasts aren’t really my area of expertise.
This one wasn’t bad, but maybe I would have enjoyed it more if I hadn’t been looking for signs of trickery.
The sixth episode is “Asteroid Annie and the Mushiblooms.” This episode is an alternate universe version of the previous episode “Asteroid Arnie and the Mushiblooms.” Once again, we have a protagonist going on an adventure with a space hero; in this case, Asteroid Annie. However, there are some differences this time round. Chief among them is that the Mushiblooms are evil, and Asteroid Annie is the only person who can stop their diabolical plot.
I think I like this episode a bit more than “Asteroid Arnie.” It just felt like the plot was better constructed this time round. There was a part where Annie said that it is important to remember three things: shake the jar, open the jar, and be kind to the babies. I assumed that this was simply AI-generated gibberish. However, it turns out that Theresa was the one who wrote that particular line. In fairness, it does have plot reverence. There’s a jar of seeds that is important to defeating the Mushiblooms. The part about being kind to the babies is because, apparently, the Mushiblooms will be reborn from the seeds, and there is a chance that they will be good. Okay, I’m just going to be real here, I got none of that from the story. I wouldn’t have known that if I hadn’t listened to the companion episode. Still, overall I found “Asteroid Annie” to be a bit of a step-up over “Asteroid Arnie.”
Our final episode is “Singer Boy and the Trip to the Moon.” Our protagonist is a clown who works for a circus. They’ve been feeling a bit blue lately, and they just need to get away from it all. So, they team up with another member of the circus named Singer Boy. Together, the two depart in a hot air balloon. The Moon is their destination, and they intend to leave their troubles millions of miles away.
This story had a number of surprisingly introspective, and dare I say, even touching moments. There’s a strong sense of melancholy throughout the story, but also a sense of hope and cautious optimism. It’s like the story is saying that, yeah, bad things happen, but they can be overcome. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. A surprisingly competent effort at a serious story for something written by an AI. Granted, this is all a bit undercut when you consider that Theresa was guiding the path the story took. Still, even with that in mind, this story wasn’t half bad. Sometimes, I wish I could get away from all of my troubles, if only for a bit. Maybe not in a hot air balloon bound for the Moon, but something along those lines, perhaps.
I’m reminded a bit of Today is Spaceship Day by Austin McConnell. It is also a story that was created via a predictive text algorithm. Austin creator turned it into an animated YouTube video using Plotagon, back before Plotagon implemented a subscription model. In fact, he even randomized the way the characters were generated. Very humorous, as you might expect, but also surprisingly touching at times. Definitely give it a watch, if you haven’t already.
And with that, we have covered all of the episodes currently available from Uncanny Robot. It was a bit of a mixed bag, and it certainly had its ups and downs. As is to be expected for something involving AI and predictive text algorithms. Still, it managed to produce some genuine laughs, and some surprisingly competent attempts at more serious material. So, overall, I’m pretty satisfied with my listening experience with Uncanny Robot. I’d recommend everyone else give it a listen. AI probably won’t be the future of audio drama, but it can make some surprisingly entraining stories, when given the right nudges.
I think that should do it from me for now. I will see you guys next time.
The fifth episode is “Peppers and the Screaming Yoof: A True Crime Parody.” It begins in April of 1969. Four meddling kids, and their dog, are on their way back from Woodstock. They soon find themselves on a mysterious farm called the Screaming Yoof. As meddling kids are wont to do, they decide to snoop around and investigate the mystery.
This episode was released on April Fools’ Day. As such, I spent most of the episode trying to figure out what the trick was going to be. I thought that maybe it would turn out to have been written completely by the humans, with no AI input. This was before I listened to the companion episode, and learned about the change in how episodes are made. So, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop the whole time. I suppose the effect was a bit like Horse eBooks. It was this Twitter account that, as the name suggests, spammed quotes from various Russian ebooks about horses. Everyone assumed that it was an automated bot account. The quotes, non sequiturs that they were, almost worked as dada poetry. It was kind of amusing to think that a bot account had inadvertently created art. Well, as it turns out, it was not a bot account, there was a human running the Horse eBooks account the entire time.
Anyway, if you’ve ever wondered what Scooby-Doo would be like if it had swearing, overt drug references, and if Scooby was the antichrist, well, here you go. The Scooby analog is mentioned to have been raised by a cult called The Devil Dogs, but this doesn’t have much bearing on the plot. There’s one point where the characters encounter a turntable from the 1980s, which apparently happened before 1969. Theresa and Rich have said they intended this story to be a parody of true crime podcasts. I do get some hints of that, but Scooby-Doo is definitely the dominant flavor here. I admit that true crime podcasts aren’t really my area of expertise.
This one wasn’t bad, but maybe I would have enjoyed it more if I hadn’t been looking for signs of trickery.
The sixth episode is “Asteroid Annie and the Mushiblooms.” This episode is an alternate universe version of the previous episode “Asteroid Arnie and the Mushiblooms.” Once again, we have a protagonist going on an adventure with a space hero; in this case, Asteroid Annie. However, there are some differences this time round. Chief among them is that the Mushiblooms are evil, and Asteroid Annie is the only person who can stop their diabolical plot.
I think I like this episode a bit more than “Asteroid Arnie.” It just felt like the plot was better constructed this time round. There was a part where Annie said that it is important to remember three things: shake the jar, open the jar, and be kind to the babies. I assumed that this was simply AI-generated gibberish. However, it turns out that Theresa was the one who wrote that particular line. In fairness, it does have plot reverence. There’s a jar of seeds that is important to defeating the Mushiblooms. The part about being kind to the babies is because, apparently, the Mushiblooms will be reborn from the seeds, and there is a chance that they will be good. Okay, I’m just going to be real here, I got none of that from the story. I wouldn’t have known that if I hadn’t listened to the companion episode. Still, overall I found “Asteroid Annie” to be a bit of a step-up over “Asteroid Arnie.”
Our final episode is “Singer Boy and the Trip to the Moon.” Our protagonist is a clown who works for a circus. They’ve been feeling a bit blue lately, and they just need to get away from it all. So, they team up with another member of the circus named Singer Boy. Together, the two depart in a hot air balloon. The Moon is their destination, and they intend to leave their troubles millions of miles away.
This story had a number of surprisingly introspective, and dare I say, even touching moments. There’s a strong sense of melancholy throughout the story, but also a sense of hope and cautious optimism. It’s like the story is saying that, yeah, bad things happen, but they can be overcome. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. A surprisingly competent effort at a serious story for something written by an AI. Granted, this is all a bit undercut when you consider that Theresa was guiding the path the story took. Still, even with that in mind, this story wasn’t half bad. Sometimes, I wish I could get away from all of my troubles, if only for a bit. Maybe not in a hot air balloon bound for the Moon, but something along those lines, perhaps.
I’m reminded a bit of Today is Spaceship Day by Austin McConnell. It is also a story that was created via a predictive text algorithm. Austin creator turned it into an animated YouTube video using Plotagon, back before Plotagon implemented a subscription model. In fact, he even randomized the way the characters were generated. Very humorous, as you might expect, but also surprisingly touching at times. Definitely give it a watch, if you haven’t already.
And with that, we have covered all of the episodes currently available from Uncanny Robot. It was a bit of a mixed bag, and it certainly had its ups and downs. As is to be expected for something involving AI and predictive text algorithms. Still, it managed to produce some genuine laughs, and some surprisingly competent attempts at more serious material. So, overall, I’m pretty satisfied with my listening experience with Uncanny Robot. I’d recommend everyone else give it a listen. AI probably won’t be the future of audio drama, but it can make some surprisingly entraining stories, when given the right nudges.
I think that should do it from me for now. I will see you guys next time.
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