For decades, television was a collective and passive ritual. The screen dictated the narrative, and viewers, whether faithful or critical, simply attended. With the arrival of streaming, linearity was broken: the viewer gained control over when, where, and how to watch. But now, an even deeper change is brewing. Instead of watching, the future of entertainment invites us to create.

Platforms like Showrunner, developed by the startup Fable Studio and recently backed by Amazon, are turning the viewer into the protagonist —not just of the story, but also of the creative process. This change marks the birth of a new era: collaborative and generative streaming, where content is no longer a finished product, but a living narrative, collectively shaped by global communities.

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From prompt to screen: this is how Showrunner works

Showrunner is not just a simple animation platform. It is a generative narrative system powered by artificial intelligence that allows users to write a prompt —a phrase, a scene, an idea— and receive in return a complete episode: script, animation, voices, music, and editing. The heart of the system is the proprietary model SHOW‑2, trained with thousands of hours of television content.

The first experiment of the platform, Exit Valley, is an animated satire about Silicon Valley, featuring avatars that parody figures like Elon Musk or Sam Altman. But what’s most interesting is not the story, but the fact that any user can modify it: change lines of dialogue, choose new endings, insert themselves as a character or even rewrite the story from scratch.

Instead of viewers, we now have active narrators, capable of generating new episodes instantly, without the need for cameras, filming equipment, or technical expertise. What was once the exclusive domain of studios and networks is now accessible from a web browser.

Towards a new creative and monetizable ecosystem

This new model not only transforms the narrative experience: it also opens up radical economic possibilities. Showrunner has implemented a system of credits and royalties that will allow users to monetize their AI-generated creations. If a story generated by a user goes viral or is adapted by another creator, a revenue distribution is established. For example, if you remix an episode based on another story, the original author receives 40% of the earnings.

This model resembles more a digital creative ecosystem than a traditional streaming platform. Just as YouTube democratized video, and Wattpad did with writing, Showrunner and other emerging platforms could do the same with series and episodic content. But with one key difference: here, no camera is needed, not even a voice. Just imagination and a prompt.

Moreover, a subscription system for creation credits is contemplated, while viewing would remain free. This suggests that the real business of the future will not only be in content, but in co-creation.

An AI that writes, draws, and acts? The question of human value

With these generative technologies advancing by leaps and bounds, an inevitable question arises: what place does human talent occupy in this new paradigm? Is the screenwriter, actor, or director being replaced? Or are they simply being extended?

History shows that technology does not eliminate human creativity; it changes its tools. The emergence of photography did not eliminate painting. Film did not kill theater. And generative AI will probably not extinguish human talent, but it will invite it to reinvent itself.

In this new ecosystem, creators will be able to license their style, their voice, their digital presence. An actor may lend their image or even their way of interpreting to train generative characters. A screenwriter can design the narrative architectures upon which hundreds of AI-generated variants are built. New professions will emerge: narrative architects, prompt engineers, world builders… hybrid trades where human sensitivity will be key to giving soul to machine-generated fictions.

Beyond the screen: towards immersive and sensory fiction

But the future of entertainment does not stop at the screen. With advancements in virtual reality, haptic interfaces, and even neurotechnology, the stage is being set for wholly immersive and sensory experiences, where the viewer does not just see the story: they feel it, live it, embody it.

Companies like Meta, Apple, and neurotech startups like Neuralink are developing environments where users can experience emotions, settings, and narrative decisions in the first person. In this context, a platform like Showrunner could evolve towards experiences where the user not only chooses which story to watch but which one to inhabit.

Science fiction? Perhaps. But just five years ago, the idea that an AI could write and animate an entire series in seconds seemed just as unreal.

And cinema? And theater? And traditional narrative?

In the face of this wave of hyperautomation in creativity, we could also witness a reevaluation of the artisanal. Auteur cinema, live theater, literary writing can become spaces of cultural resistance, where the analog regains value for its authenticity, its imperfection, and its humanity. Coexistence will be possible —and perhaps desirable—.

There will be those who seek personalized and generative experiences. And there will be those who still want to be carried away by the vision of an author. One does not cancel out the other. The future of narrative will be hybrid, not exclusive.

The big question: do we want to be showrunners of everything?

This technological revolution is not only technical, it is also existential. Do we want to have the power to alter every story we consume? Do we want to turn every series into an editable experience? Or do we sometimes prefer to simply surrender to a story and be carried away?

On Reddit, some users comment skeptically that this wave of AI-generated content could create more noise than value. "Just more empty content without soul," they say. And they may be right. But the key will lie in how we use these tools, not in the tools themselves.

Conclusion: narrative as play, creation, and mirror

What is at stake is not just a new way of consuming television, but a new relationship with fiction itself. From viewers to creators. From consumers to narrators. From audience to community.

The future of streaming —and perhaps entertainment in general— will not be a catalog or a schedule. It will be a network of evolving stories, co-created by humans and machines, that will allow us to explore infinite worlds and also to explore ourselves.

And perhaps the most transformative of all is this: for the first time, the center of the narrative is no longer the screen… but the user.