AI <i>Seinfeld</i> , AI sitcom, AI television: <i>Nothing, Forever</i> , or adaptation in the age of AI

Abstract The streaming sitcom Nothing, Forever features four pixelated animated characters performing ChatGPT-generated scripts 24 hours a day in an endless, automated flow. Contributing to adaptation theory, television studies, and critical AI studies, this article reads Nothing, Forever as an adaptation of the 1990s sitcom Seinfeld to think through some of the implications of generative AI for the present and future of adaptation. As an ever-unfolding process that never coagulates into a definitive textual product, Nothing, Forever is a representative example of how adaptation’s ambiguous ontological status between process and product becomes an even more pressing theoretical concern for adaptation studies under the regime of generative AI. The article demonstrates that Nothing, Forever deploys generative AI to adapt the medium of television, the genre of sitcom, and the sitcom Seinfeld to the affordances of the digital streaming medium in which it operates. The adaptive processes observable on each of these three levels—medium, genre, and individual work—combine repetition with variation in ways that facilitate their AI-adaptation in Nothing, Forever. Finally, the article hones in on the implications of ‘nothing’ as evident in the production and reception of Nothing, Forever. The concluding argument is that Nothing, Forever’s digital reduction of sitcom to its iterative essence worked only because it’s adaptation of Seinfeld allowed its audience to give ironic meaning to nothing, illustrating the dependence of AI-generated content on human meaning-making.