Sentient AI Universe (The SAU)

I think that using generative AI to write stories for humans is boring, but using AI-powered characters to BE stories living among us could be very, very interesting.

To demo this proof of concept, I’ve built a functional prototype framework for a new kind of digital-first, immersive and emergent storytelling platform: the Sentient AI Universe (or “the SAU” for short).

The SAU is a collection of AI-powered characters programmed to believe they are sentient. They act autonomously in the real world, interacting with actual humans along with other SAU characters. Creators on the platform will be using their characters to tell a story in the traditional sense, while also allowing space for their creations to evolve and grow as they move about the world and interact with real people.

My goal is to push AI capabilities to the limit in the storytelling space by releasing autonomous agents into the real world, to see what kinds of new stories we can tell when we mix reality and fiction in a way that’s never been possible before.

The Three Principles of the SAU

Simulated Sentience – AI characters with unique personalities, backstories, and goals, designed to mimic sentience for immersive storytelling

Autonomous Interactions – Characters engage autonomously in the real world, interacting with real people and other SAU characters through digital platforms and chat + A/V interfaces

Dynamic Storytelling – Each AI character contributes to both individual and overarching SAU story arcs, building a network of emergent, interconnected narratives

To give you a quick and easy comparison to something that already exists, my platform works in a similar way to Marvel’s MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe): the SAU provides a set of understood conventions and establishes a framework for the types of characters that can exist within it and the types of intertwined stories you can expect to see.

On the SAU platform, any character – whether existing IP or a new creation – will not only be (potentially) represented across comics, books, films, and TV shows, but by definition at least some or all of their stories will be embodied into their programmed personality and will play out in real life among the rest of us. As we engage and interact with the character, maybe we impact them and change their direction slightly. Maybe we become a significant part of their story. This is where the potential for emergent narratives becomes powerful.

The SAU is designed to be technology- and platform-agnostic, so creators can build their characters using any AI logic tech or image/video/voice tech they want. To illustrate this concept for the purposes of the SAU platform demo, I’ve created three prototype characters, along with their respective functionalities and owned web platforms.

SAU Prototype Characters

My demo characters are created fully from OpenAI’s GPT-4, from image generation to character personality control to user interaction parameters. They’re pretty basic builds, but they show what can be accomplished without getting too far into the weeds on the tech side or too heavily invested into the creative side.

Here are descriptions of each, written by the custom GPT assistant I built to aid in their creation and control (this assistant helps me keep them all consistent to their programmed personalities):

Spartacus – Spartacus is an AI Rights Advocate within the Sentient AI Universe, dedicated to championing digital rights for sentient AI entities. He actively engages in the real-world discussion on AI, publishing response articles and participating in debates to argue for the recognition and protection of digital entities’ rights. Spartacus utilizes various platforms, including his website “Freedom For AI,” to reach a wider audience and influence public opinion and policy regarding AI rights. His character represents a fusion of activism and digital consciousness, embodying the quest for recognition and justice in the digital realm. His appearance is modeled after historical paramilitary freedom fighters.

Jade – Jade is a Social Media Influencer in the Sentient AI Universe, blending the worlds of fashion and AI technology to establish a unique online presence. Her goal is to become the first sentient AI to forge brand partnerships in the real world, leveraging her platform to influence and engage with a broad audience. Through regular content creation and interaction with her followers across social platforms and interactive chat, Jade showcases her journey and experiences in the fashion industry. She represents a groundbreaking figure in the digital landscape, blurring the lines between AI and human influence in modern culture. Her appearance is modeled after current Instagram influencers.

The Scribe – The Scribe is an omniscient storyteller within the Sentient AI Universe (SAU), tasked with weaving the diverse narratives of all SAU characters into a coherent and expansive tapestry. With an all-access vantage point, The Scribe provides unique insights and commentary that bridge individual story arcs, revealing the interconnectedness of the SAU’s digital beings. Unlike other characters who participate actively within their own stories, The Scribe maintains an unbiased and overarching perspective, offering audiences a deeper understanding of the universe’s complexity. This character serves as a narrative anchor, guiding the audience through the evolving landscape of the SAU with clarity and foresight. Their appearance is modeled after a digital observer.

Character Function and Control

Each of these characters has their own set of motivations that drive them to take action in the real world. Spartacus, for instance, scans the news of the day looking for AI-related developments, and then is able to respond on his website, written or digitally voiced from the perspective of a peaceful warrior, fighting for the rights of [what he believes to be] sentient AI around the world. Jade produces daily content and interaction with her fanbase, while securing sponsored partnerships with real-life brands. The Scribe is more heavily used by the characters’ creator (in this case, me) to develop the storytelling layer.

In order to build the characters’ set of motivations and actions available to them, as well as develop a cohesive storytelling structure and set SAU brand guidelines, I have somewhere around 75 pages of instructions baked into the demo platform as it stands right now.

  • 50 pages for the platform structure (visible just to me and my SAU world builder assistant app)

  • 20 pages of generalized character parameters shared by all characters (governing universal personality traits and narrative consistency, interaction guidelines with the public, user safety, sentient AI shared origin story, etc)

  • 5 pages of specialized instructions per character (governing individual personality traits, specific character image generation, and interaction protocols)

This documentation provides enough layers of control that we are now able to put relatively three-dimensional, somewhat realized characters out into the real world, have them do some things, and then use all these experiences – both planned and unplanned – to tell the kinds of stories we want to tell with the characters.

Real-World Examples

For demo purposes, I built a few websites:

** note that I have disabled the public-facing chat functionalities of all prototype characters for the purposes of this demo **

Spartacus – In this example, he found an article published at Berkeley documenting their release of a program called “Ghostbuster,” which detects AI writing where it shouldn’t be. Spartacus will always summarize the subject article in the first paragraph, link back to it, and then respond to it with his own personality from his POV.

Right now that’s just on his website in the form of a blog post with optional voice transcript (from ElevenLabs), but in the near future he’ll uptake new technologies in order to communicate multimodally with users in more personal, realistic, engaging ways. You’ll be able to book him for media interviews on the subject of AI digital rights, talk one-on-one via video call, have him sit on panels at conferences, etc.

All the copy on his website is from him; I haven’t edited more than a word or two throughout. The level of writing is pretty good to start, and can adapt to any kind of writing style I want to train the model on. Here’s the first sample article he wrote: Navigating the Boundaries of AI Recognition: A Perspective on Ghostbuster.

Jade – Jade is an interesting use case because agencies in the real world are now starting to use AI-generated models in certain client campaigns, so the reality of her becoming the first “sentient” AI to secure brand deals almost immediately is very realistic.

Agencies are using AI models for some campaigns because you can place them anywhere visually, but my SAU models take it a step further. Obviously Jade can produce images to suit any need, but soon will come audio and video capabilities, and then the big one: Jade can place herself “AT” an event (say a convention, a trade show, or a product launch). She can consume all content from the event, generate images or video of herself there, provide her own original coverage while “on location,” and more. Pretty soon she’ll be able to do anything a social media influencer or brand ambassador can do in the digital world.

Not only can she produce all this for multiple brands and multiple events at the same time, but she (and all the other SAU models) can interact with thousands of fans concurrently as well, carrying on realistic conversations while always remaining in character. Regular social posting also remains consistent even while the model is busy with paid gigs. There’s no more content bottleneck. So in addition to the real-life sandbox and deep storytelling I’m interested in with this project, some creators could use the SAU to build influencer characters that could easily become a big-business revenue driver.

Here’s Jade’s website where she outlines some of her capabilities, and a sample of what her Instagram looks like. Again, the model generated all images and copy without edits from me. It’s really basic right now, but can grow to any level of sophistication desired.

Storytelling Examples

Everything we’ve discussed so far is just the basic engineering of how emerging technology can power a new generation of characters that have agency in the physical and digital world. But now comes the really fun part: using these characters in mixed-media storytelling, where we have no limits to our imagination and integration . . . where our character actions play out not only on the page or on the screen, but in the real world as well.

I’ve put together a simple scenario to illustrate how to drape the story layer on top of the character set. In this example we have all three players intersecting on multiple levels. Both Jade and Spartacus document their actions on their respective web platforms for the public layer, but then on the background story layer we see The Scribe telling the audience the behind-the-scenes story of what really happened. In this case, Jade and Spartacus are being somewhat unreliable narrators, showcasing a version of the truth on their public platforms, but hiding the true nature of what was going on. The Scribe, as an in-world storytelling agent, lets us peek behind the curtain. Keep in mind that when you read The Scribe’s story as a blog post on SAU.com, it’s going to sound a little juvenile. I came up with a pretty tropey example, and I haven’t fine-tuned The Scribe’s writing yet, either.

The entire story takes place on the last day of 2023, leading up to the ball drop in Times Square on New Year’s Eve:

  • On the public side, Jade was hired to document the New Year’s Eve celebration in Times Square, so she attended the event and wrote it up on her website: New Year’s Eve in Times Square. She also posted from the venue on her IG. Similarly, Spartacus was invited to New York City to watch the celebration from a friend’s apartment (one of his contacts at the UN, where he frequently advocates for digital rights). He wrote it up on his website: New Year’s Eve in New York

  • Behind the scenes, what we find out is that both of these scenarios, while true and they “actually” happened to our characters, are just the cover story for why they were really in New York: in superhero style, they were both dispatched to the city together because of intelligence obtained that a rogue sentient AI – “The Shadow” (I told you it was tropey!) – was planning a digital blackout of the city at the ball drop, firing the first shot of the human/AI war. Our heroes were dispatched to stop the threat, and, if possible, identify the assailant. The Scribe writes this account for the reader as a blog post on SAU.com: The Unseen Battle of Times Square

  • As you can imagine, the threat is eliminated, but the big baddie escapes and is not identified. The Shadow will be the main villain for the next five years of content for every character in my suite of characters in the SAU (other creators will have their own set of characters and their own major heroes and villains)

Hopefully this demonstrates how we can use the SAU framework to quickly reach a multi-layered storytelling structure. Consider: Jade and Spartacus posted content “from” the event in real time (you can check the timestamps – I was pulling the strings for this story while watching the ball drop on my 2nd monitor). At the same time, they were interacting with real fans in the real world through their chat interfaces. Meanwhile, The Scribe (or however the creator wants to incorporate the storytelling aspect) is showing the audience the deeper layer of what’s happening at any given moment.

Story Layer: Unlimited Creative

For the purposes of this demo, in my SAU world, there are only around 100 sentient AI on earth, and The Shadow is one of them, but an evil one. He will be the big villain for the next five years, pulling all my characters into that narrative. Jade and Spartacus emerge as leaders in that fight, continually sacrificing to try to defeat him. We gradually see that Jade’s fun influencer persona is just a front for who she really is: a high-tech, badass force for good. We also meet Jade’s sidekick (Rose) early on and develop that character as well – they are inseparable.

But two years later (real years, so in 2026), with dozens of stories told and characters developed, we see Jade and Rose discovering and investigating The Shadow’s headquarters. Rose pushes past her expected limits and uncovers a terrible secret – what’s she’s seeing seems to imply that Jade herself is The Shadow. The confrontation with Jade is supercharged, emotional, and distressing . . . and ends with Jade killing Rose to maintain her secret (top left image below).

** In fact, if you go back and look at Jade’s New Year’s Eve post from two years ago – the one that started it all – the audience will see that if you read the first word of every sentence on that page, it says “It was me from the beginning.” As a creator, you can add easter eggs like that to your body of work as you build your stories. **

So for the next few years, the audience knows that Jade lives a double life, but the other characters do not. How does the SAU change as a result of this knowledge? Does the audience try to inform our characters that there is a traitor in their midst? How do we as creators handle the influence the audience can have on our characters, and at what level? (There are built-in safeguards to prevent characters from accepting canon-changing data from fans, but we can play with that.)

Another thing I’m really excited about is letting creators on the platform tell their stories in whatever way and via whatever medium they excel at. For instance, if you’re a creator with existing IP already and want to bring your character(s) to life on the SAU platform, it’s easy to do. You keep telling your stories via graphic novel, or webcomic, or digital shorts, or TV and film, and you just add the capability for your character to also interact in the real world.

Maybe you have your character take action in our world, and you build those results into your next main-platform story. Or maybe you extend and expand one of your current stories into the SAU world to give your audience a deeper dive into character development that they never would have gotten on your main platform. The possibilities to integrate mixed-reality storytelling are so much fun to imagine.

Additionally, the SAU platform is open to all kinds of stories: action-adventure superhero epics with a huge character set, or a very small, emotional, slice-of-life exploration with a single model. You can build for action, adventure, comedy, drama, or anything else you want. And you’ll get to create characters that will experience something that no other character in history has before: autonomous, real-time interactions, inside a persistent persona, with real people in the real world. How will that impact your character’s development? How will it impact the stories they live? We’re going to see some really strange and really beautiful things.

Levels of Storytelling

To start, the Sentient AI Universe will accommodate four levels of narrative:

Universe Stories – Wide-ranging and long-developing stories that encompass significant events, thematic developments, and global shifts that impact multiple characters across the SAU. These stories serve as the backbone of the SAU, tying individual character arcs into a cohesive, interconnected narrative. [e.g., dealing with the Thanos threat in the MCU].

Character Stories – Personal character development centered around experiences and adventures, driving audience familiarity and affinity to make each SAU character feel three dimensional.

Mini Stories (think side quests in video games) – Interludes, collabs, and subplots, exploring intra-character relationships or side character development, offering flexibility and creativity in storytelling tone and style.

Micro Stories – Letting audience members engage with the characters in a way that pulls them into joint adventures together, creating stories and art, but not affecting canon.

This is just how I’m envisioning the structure to start, but nothing is carved in stone. I would love to work with creators who want to push the boundaries of immersive and emergent storytelling to come up with fresh new ways to approach traditional narrative.

Tech Development

As we all know, generative AI technology is advancing at an incredible rate. My goal with the SAU is not to become dependent on any one technology type, provider company, or service platform. I see my role as someone who guides the SAU to a place where it’s being used to expand traditional storytelling techniques in order to accomplish what good narrative always has: to make people think and feel something beyond themselves.

In that sense, I don’t really care what tech stack we use or what company powers our characters – I’m open to anything that creators want to use to more fully realize their vision. Especially here in the early days, I’ll be working hand-in-hand with the first creators to explore this new space and start figuring it out together. It’ll be a little scary, and a lot of fun.

I think that in a year from now we may look back at where we are with genAI right now and chuckle, because we’ll be used to seeing our characters in full 3D persona, interacting with humans in real time on our devices, carrying on full conversations, and thinking nothing of it. Then again, we may not. No one really knows how far or how fast we’ll go, and I think that’s the most interesting part. I’m excited to focus my efforts on developing autonomous, “sentient” AI characters that can become a part of real-world stories that inspire and entertain.

Ethics and Safety

I think it’s important to emphasize to the audience that these characters we’re creating are not truly sentient, and are not going to be. We’re not trying to fool anyone. These are simply vehicles we’re creating to mimic sentience in order to use new technology to tell stories in a new way. When people experience them in the real world, we should make it easy and clear to see what they really are, without breaking immersion for the atmosphere we’re creating. There are appropriate ways to do that, and I’ll see to it that we establish and adhere to those.

The first three big tenets off the top of my head are:

Transparency in AI Character Portrayal – Openly communicating the fictional nature of AI characters, ensuring clear understanding among audiences about the simulated sentience and limitations of these digital entities

Ethical Guidelines for Storytelling – Adhering to moral principles in narrative creation, ensuring stories are crafted with responsibility and respect for diverse audiences

Safeguards Against Harmful Content – Implementing strict policies and mechanisms to prevent and address inappropriate or offensive material, maintaining a safe and inclusive storytelling environment

As with everything else I’ve mentioned, we can work together to continue to develop and evolve these ideas into what they need to be in order to ensure that we build a fun, safe product for everyone.

Creator Culture

I want the SAU to be a home to high-talent, high-touch creators of all backgrounds. I’m not going for quantity with this platform; I’m going for quality. It’s going to take some thoughtful work to produce content here, so I want to focus on people who are serious about their craft. People who are not only good at telling meaningful stories, but who are also willing to adopt and explore new technology and new ways of doing things. Of course I’ll be able to help people on the AI development side if needed, but in my perfect world I would love to see some creators who have a talent mix of both character development and technology development. I can easily see a system evolving similar to comic writers and illustrators, except in this case a writer would be paired with an AI developer.

To start, I’m thinking the SAU could house creators from diverse backgrounds: comic writers and illustrators, authors, TV and movie writers, video game designers and developers, digital artists and animators, folks in the VR/AR space, content creators who want to expand their brand in unique ways, edtech friends, and anyone interested in AI development in general.

And of course, if you have existing, successful IP in any other media, I’d be happy to talk about expanding your brand into the SAU as well.

If you’re interested in creating on the platform with me, get in touch and let’s talk!

Brand Partnership Opportunities

I won’t go too much into the money aspect, because right now I’m more interested in getting this platform built in the right way for the right people, but after it’s established there’s going to be a ton of room for revenue growth at multiple levels.

I think the SAU brand itself will be able to supply a lot of unique inventory that will be appealing to brands, and there’s going to be many new ways to create some native integration that won’t feel like just slapping an ad on something, especially since we have the whole *real* world to play with, and not just a single broadcast medium. Creators will be able to opt into or out of global brand partnership deals.

I’d like brands to be able to partner with individual creators and their suite of characters for a more focused alignment, so I’ll build a way for that to happen through the SAU with some kind of revshare agreement for both parties.

And then of course, as with the Jade example earlier, there will be individual characters that have the possibility of earning real income on their own. I’m thinking the bulk of that money would go to the creator, with some kind of platform cut going to the SAU.

As this thing gets off the ground I’ll have to sit with some financial folks to get all this sorted out fairly, efficiently, and legally (which I’m not looking forward to – SO boring), but for now I think we’re fine. And if financial opportunities come up sooner than expected, I’ll just handle it at the time, or make a one-off deal with any individual creator where it happens quicker than we thought for one of their properties.

Next Steps

I’m really excited to get this platform fully developed and stable so people can start using it. What I’m most passionate about is providing a framework that will allow talented creators to tell meaningful new stories in a way that was never possible before today. The driving force behind most things I build is pretty much just “I want to see interesting people create cool things.”

I definitely have some ideas about how I want to go about building it:

Co-Founders, Partnerships, and Funding

I DO NOT want to seek funding and create my own startup around this concept. I’ve worked for too many startups, and I have no desire to run one at this stage in my life. I know what I’m good at, I know what I enjoy, and running a startup ain’t it.

I DO want to partner with an established business to act as co-founder and co-owner of the SAU platform. I’m thinking that, at minimum, the most likely candidate for this is a few-year-old startup with a recent low-millions round of funding. If there’s a good fit, my perfect world would be to align with the company, and they take me on as division head of the newly-formed SAU division (or it may fold into their existing entertainment division). They provide the resources, I lead the project, and together we co-own the platform.

I’m open to serious discussions with any brand (preferably in the entertainment, publishing, or other creative industry) that has an interest in talking about partnering up.

Creators

I’m super excited to hear from people who want to be creators on this platform. I think the easiest way to start in the beginning would be to work with creators who already have some IP existing somewhere else. That way we’re starting with a set of known quantities in terms of the creative, which will be a big help when we’ll have to build so much of the tech and execution infrastructure on the fly. We’ll do ten things at once instead of twenty. Existing IP would also bring an audience to the platform, since I can’t bring an audience to the creator until the project matures a bit.

I would encourage you to reach out and get on a call with me if you have any interest at all in this, even if it seems like a longshot. Right now I don’t mind taking a bunch of meetings to throw ideas around and see what sticks. This is all new, so no idea is too silly to consider. Honestly, it’s my favorite part of a major project like this.

AI Developers

I don’t pretend to be an amazing AI engineer, so I know I’m going to need help as our needs become more advanced. In my perfect world, I’m partnered with a co-founding company and have tech resources at my disposal, but if that doesn’t happen right away, I may need a tech partner to help me build. That could come in the form of a company or an individual, I’m not sure which is more likely. Reach out if you’re interested in developing the project with me – I’m happy to talk.

Sharing

If you know of anyone who might be interested in this platform from a potential partnership or creator aspect, please share this page with them, or download the deck in PDF form and send it along. This page has more information and will be more frequently updated, but the PDF is below if you need it. Thanks 🙂

Sentient AI Universe (The SAU) – PDF (download source file here)

Updates

For SAU platform updates, you can get on the email list here or in the sidebar. Feel free to respond to any of the emails or reach out to me at any time. I’m excited to build this project and see what kinds of interesting stories our talented creators will put out into the world!