Everyone knows the Simpsons. The show holds several American television longevity records, and as of May 21, 2023, 750 episodes of The Simpsons have aired. It’s currently in its thirty-fourth season. Now, the decline of the show is apparent in media: people often criticize the show for being a shell of its former self. So, here’s my idea: can I bring the show back to its former glory using AI?
Older episodes of the Simpsons are generally considered to be much better than the new ones. The gags are better, the stories more compelling and the characters more engaging. So, my experiment revolved around getting ChatGPT to write me an episode of the Simpsons in the style of the old episodes. That is of course a difficult task, since “style” is difficult to capture, and I’m not sure if ChatGPT has the ability to be funny.
The idea was to test ChatGPT’s database on its knowledge on the Simpsons. For example, I asked the AI what the Simspons’ first episode was called and what it was about. It was correct. Then I asked what the episode 2 from the 8th season was called, and what it was about. It’s an episode called “you only move twice”, where the Simpsons move to a new town ruled by a supervillain named “Hank Scorpio”, whom Homer starts to work for. The AI perfectly summarized the episode.
Knowing that the AI’s knowledge on Simpsons episodes was surprisingly extensive, I asked it to name me a few jokes from the episode. I watched it relatively recently, so when ChatGPT presented me the jokes I knew they did indeed occur in the episode. The AI remembers may know more about the shows glory days than its current creators. Anyhow, I imagined the following: I would ask ChatGPT to go episode by episode, joke by joke, and I would input those in a database. Then, using this database (compromised of only the “good” episodes of the Simpsons, of course”), I would tell Chatgpt to make me a new episode, with a random selection of the old jokes and a storyline to glue it all together. Do you think this is worth a try?
