Amazon invests in Fable’s Showrunner, an AI platform that generates animated TV episodes
Alexa Fund backs a San Francisco startup building a text-driven system to create and stream AI-generated animated episodes
Amazon’s Alexa Fund has made an investment in Fable, a San Francisco startup developing Showrunner, an artificial intelligence platform that generates animated television episodes from text prompts, the company said. The size of the investment was not disclosed.
Fable describes Showrunner as a "Netflix of AI" that allows users to type a few words and instantly generate an episode, either creating a story from scratch or joining and expanding a world created by others. The company officially launched with Exit Valley, a satirical animated series set in a fictional tech hub called Sim Francisco and distributed through the company’s website and Discord server, where episodes are streamed and created in real time.
Fable said the Showrunner engine is powered by a proprietary AI model fine-tuned for animated storytelling. The company previously released nine AI-generated South Park episodes that it said drew more than 80 million views, demonstrating its capacity to produce serial animated content at scale.
Edward Saatchi, Fable’s chief executive and a co-founder of Oculus Story Studio, has framed the product as part of a shift from passive viewing to participatory entertainment. Saatchi told Variety that "Hollywood streaming services are about to become two-way entertainment," arguing that audiences will be able to make new episodes with a few words and become characters with a photo.
Showrunner focuses on animated content rather than photorealistic video, a deliberate choice Fable says makes automated production more tractable. While larger technology companies are among those racing to develop lifelike AI video, Fable has positioned its product toward animation and user-driven storytelling tools that do not require traditional production crews, cameras or studios.
Amazon’s backing through the Alexa Fund aligns the e-commerce and cloud giant with a growing number of technology investors placing bets on generative AI applications for entertainment and media. Amazon has invested in other voice- and content-related projects through the Alexa Fund in recent years; the company did not provide details beyond confirming the investment.
Fable markets Showrunner as a platform where users can be writers, directors and characters, and where episodes can be remixed or extended by others in the community. The company routes interested users to a Discord server where members watch and participate in live creation sessions.
The investment underscores how generative AI is being applied to media production and distribution, enabling new forms of user-generated content and lowering technical and financial barriers to producing serialized animation. Fable’s launch comes amid broader industry activity in generative models for image, audio and video that media companies and technology platforms are increasingly integrating into products and services.
Fable and Amazon did not disclose a timeline for a broader public rollout beyond the company’s current Discord-driven distribution, and the Alexa Fund did not specify financial terms of the deal. The company’s focus on animated storytelling and community-driven creation represents a distinct approach to AI-generated entertainment within a rapidly evolving technology landscape.
