Welcome to Lowpass! This week, I caught up with Xumo’s former CEO to learn more about his new AI venture.

Why Xumo’s co-founder is betting on AI filmmaking for his next venture

Xumo co-founder and former CEO Colin Petrie-Norris is back with a new startup, and it’s all about AI: Fairground Entertainment aims to be a studio / hub for AI-generated visual entertainment, with the goal of both building its own public-facing platform as well as licensing AI content to third-party streaming services.

The company just announced that it has raised $4 million in funding, and plans to begin distributing AI-generated shows later this year. Obviously, Fairground is not the only company dabbling in AI filmmaking. In addition to vendors like Runway, there are already dozens of AI studios out there.

However, few have the same background that Petrie-Norris has. Founded as a  joint-venture between Panasonic and Viant, Xumo was one of a handful of players responsible for turning free, linear streaming channels (FAST channels, as industry insiders like to call them) into a major part of the online video ecosystem. The company got later acquired by Comcast, and eventually became the brand of a joint-venture between Comcast and Charter.

“Cable and linear TV was the realm of the very well-financed,” Petrie-Norris told me when we caught up this week. “You had to have a ton of money to set up a cable TV station.” 

FAST disrupted that by doing away with retransmission fees and other limitations of cable TV, making it that much easier for smaller digital brands to launch their own 24/7 network. Xumo and similar companies then help to distribute those channels to millions of viewers, often in the same EPG that also lists ABC, CBS and other major players.

Petrie-Norris told me he sees the potential for generative AI to be similarly disruptive. Storytellers who up until now didn’t have the means to bring their ideas to life in Hollywood can now opt for AI instead. “It's a democratization, in a sense, of the process,” he said.

To tap into that crowd, Fairground aims to focus not just on a few bespoke projects, but eventually aggregate the works of thousands of creators. “It’s a people-powered endeavor,” Petrie-Norris said.

Fairground aims to experiment with a number of different formats, including 20-30 minute shows. However, Petrie-Norris readily acknowledged that there are still imitations to AI video generation, including when it comes to compiling the short clips generated by Runway or Veo into longer works. Ultimately, it all comes down to storytelling, he argued. “Just because you can make an hour-long movie doesn't mean it's a good movie.”

So where will we get to see Fairground shows and clips? “There's a lot of interest from distributors, streaming platforms,” Petrie-Norris told me. He didn’t name any names, but suggested that AI is in many ways the perfect match for ad-supported services. “The ad-supported model is very well suited to this type of content, if you think about the cost to produce relative to the yield,” he said.

What else

Google’s long, winding road to Android XR. In my latest story for Fast Company, I take a look at Google’s past AR/VR efforts — and why this time may be different.

HTC’s VR headset will get a tariff-related price increase. The maker of the Vive VR headsets plans to announce new pricing on June 1.

Fox’s streaming service will be called Fox One. The service will feature Fox’s linear networks, is expected to launch this fall.

ESPN’s streaming service will be called … ESPN. And ESPN will charge $30 per month for ESPN when it launches this fall, but prices may go up after a year.

Max is re-rebranding as HBO Max. Okay, sure, why not. But we all know they’re eventually going to just call it HBO, right?

YouTube Shorts are coming to TVs. The Google-owned video service is also rolling out a bunch of other tweaks to its TV app.

Spotify’s AI DJ now takes voice commands. Finally a chance to yell at the DJ without getting thrown out of the club … but, seriously: Spotify has had a complicated relationship with voice control, so it’s actually quite interesting to see them embrace it once again.

The new owner of Napster rebrands as … Napster. Infinite Reality, which bought Napster for $200 million in March, is now called Napster Inc. The rebranding comes a few weeks after a Forbes Investigation raised questions about Infinite Reality’s funding and business.

That’s it

For a variety of reasons, this newsletter was a bit shorter than usual, but I should have some good in-depth stories in the coming weeks. But since I have you: What would you like to read about next? Feel free to respond to this email with some suggestions — bonus points if it’s not a pitch for your own company.

Thanks for reading, have a great weekend!