A cultural touchstone of America, Fox’s The Simpsons has infiltrated pop culture for decades. However, since the rise of the internet, no moment in the long-running animation has been more prominent than Steamed Hams, and one Twitch channel wants it to last forever.
Found on Twitch channel UnlimitedSteam, an AI Steamed Hams show is constantly running live. Powered by ChatGPT, the stream is simply an endless recreation of The Simpsons scene with new moments generating as time goes on.
As one version ends, another starts. Presented through text-to-speech voices and archaic love 3D animations, the AI Twitch stream moves from scenarios that are barely changed from the original scene to some wild adaptations on the classic Steamed Hams sketch.
While we were watching, multiple sketches turned Principle Seymore Skinner into a cannibal. For example, one sketch showed the school principle cooking a human shinbone, another had the character cook an “occult recipe” for his employer.
The AI-generated sketches don’t often change all that much from the original version. While dialogue changes, the general plot is more often than not the same with alterations to what Skinner is cooking.
Obviously, this isn’t the first Twitch stream generated by artificial intelligence. For example, an AI generated version of Seinfeld was running constantly on Twitch until it was taken down for homophobic and transphobic statements.
The AI-powered Steamed Hams sketches aren’t as funny as the original Simpsons sketch. (I mean, how could it be?) They also don’t hold a candle to any of the human-made edits of the classic sketch like, for example, Steamed Hams Inc., an edit of Steamed Hams into the Gorillaz song Feel Good Inc. Nevertheless, it’s still a fun experiment.