AI storytelling may seem to be at an impasse: Hollywood writers are determined to prevent AI from replacing their work. Studios are skeptical of efforts to license their characters for AI agents. And fans delight in sussing out bad AI in stories and videos.
But Saga.xyz, a Silicon Valley business that started out as a protocol for scaling blockchains, is taking its technology to AI and pursuing a new approach it believes could satisfy everyone: It seeks to supplement, not replace, the storylines in films, TV shows and video games. And it aims to do so by creating AI agents based on very well-known characters, without cheapening their respective canons.
Saga.xyz will soon announce major licensing deals that will allow fans of major IP — including several characters who are global household names — to interact with AI agents based on popular characters during the long stretches between official releases.
Instead of waiting three years for a new movie starring Superhero X — a made-up name we’re using for the sake of simplicity — you’ll be able to interact with him daily. He’ll remember key details about you, including your likes and dislikes. And unlike a romantic-companion AI, for example, he’ll push back or disagree, from time to time, just like a human friend would.
Saga.xyz hasn’t yet announced who the characters are, but we can assure you: They’re very well-known IP, and belong in the same conversation as the Disney properties recently licensed to OpenAI. That deal will allow fans to use OpenAI’s Sora to make videos with Pixar, Disney, Star Wars and Marvel characters.
“The goal is to originate the agents with the studios so all of our agents are trained on the lore, the background, whatever content the studio hands us, so that it has a really solid creative foundation,” Saga.xyz CEO Rebecca Liao tells MovieMaker.
“And the studio continues to be involved as we continue to fine-tune the agent. So if the agent starts to go off in a certain direction, and the studio believes, ‘Oh, we need to rein it in a bit, in order to stay within the brand guidelines’… we can do that.”
Intriguingly, Saga.xyz doesn’t plan to announce any near-term deals with major film or TV studios. Instead, it is making deals involving the video-game incarnations of beloved characters.
Liao says game studios are presently more open to AI agents based on characters than traditional studios are — even if the characters span films, TV shows, games and other mediums.
Liao’s hope is that the AI agents will feel so authentic that fans won’t notice much difference between the AI agents based on their game versions and the way the characters behave in film and TV.
And of course the interaction between a fan and Superhero X won’t change the Superhero X canon — just as fan fiction, or a child playing with an action figure, doesn’t alter canon.
SAGA.xyz’s Rollout Plan for New AI Agents
One of the first places fans will meet Saga’s new AI agents is on social channels. Superhero X could be deployed across Reddit, X, Instagram, TikTok and Discord, offering tips on a game or simply striking up a conversation with a user. All Saga.xyz agents will be designated with official handles.
The agents will be able to interact with millions of fans at once, remembering data about all of them, like where they are in a game. Fans can interact with them through DMs, WhatsApp chats, video calls, and more. The studio guardrails are intended to ensure that Superhero X behaves like a hero, not a villain.
The intention, Liao says, is to “form that meaningful relationship between a character that you love and the user,” with an eventual eye toward helping studios promote their games.
“So then the agent becomes a game guide, for instance,” she said. “It’ll give you tips on the game. It’ll help you move through levels in the game.”
It can also serve as a “brand ambassador and a salesperson” for film and TV projects associated with the character.
“Because there’s cross-pollination here, it can also help promote anything coming out in terms of content,” Liao said.
The hope is that film and TV studios will allow Saga.xyz more and more access to their characters as the company demonstrates the trustworthiness and value of its AI agents.
Liao, an attorney as well as Saga.xyz’s co-founder and CEO, notes that fans will eventually be able to use the AI agents to represent them on social media and in games. Studios are only likely to intervene, she says, if the agents behave badly or start making money on the studios’ IP.
But she says no one wants that.
“If they make an agent that is more empathetic, more entertaining, cuter than the agent that we’ve come up with — you know, hopefully it’s not the case,” she laughs. “But if it is the case, I think the studio’s best interest is to work with that talent, as opposed to, like, prosecute them.”
Protecting Users
Having an AI agent memorize your gaming preference — or tastes in superheroes — could offer a gold mine of customer research, starting at whatever age a user starts interacting with the agent. The company that owns Superhero X, for example, could use data gathered through user interactions for very targeted consumer marketing, for killer fan service, or in a litany of other ways.
Liao notes that the same data protection rules that apply in other circumstances also apply to AI agents. But she isn’t fond of a laissez faire, anything-goes approach to technology. In addition to ethical concerns, she says, it’s bad business.
“Brand perception among users is the most important thing,” she says. “So if users perceive, ‘Hey, I’m being manipulated,’ oftentimes that’s a hit to whether they want to continue working with that brand.”
Saga.xyz also sets boundaries on its AI agents: They aren’t designed to be romantic-companion bots, for example.
Saga.xyz and Scale
Saga.xyz’s overall focus is on scalability, Liao says, whether that means scaling in blockchain or AI agents.
“We started off scaling crypto and blockchains, and then we realized that the technology could be leveraged really well to scale AI and particularly AI agents,” she said.
The company is also trying to reduce the costs of acquiring new users — by using characters who seem as familiar as friends.
“AI agents that are based on personas or based on characters, just take up a lot of computing space, particularly when you want these agents to have persistent memory,” Liao notes.
“If you deploy the same agent across, say, multiple social media platforms, or multiple e-commerce websites, then they need to remember what you’ve done on all those other platforms. So the idea is to develop an agent that truly has a personal relationship with you… kind of like a friend, they remember details about you. They are curious about things that are going on in your life.”
What’s next for the company depends on how well Saga.xyz’s rollout of its AI agents go: When people see Superhero X on Reddit, will they keep scrolling?
Or DM?