One of the best factor about Seattle’s grunge period is that it existed earlier than the web might fully spoil it — though the mainstream media, MTV and style designers finally did their finest.
None of them can be any match at the moment for synthetic intelligence.
In a brand new video we noticed on Instagram, a time-traveling vlogger below the deal with Roxy In Time goes again to 1992 Seattle to discover the town’s music scene throughout its heyday. The result’s grunge meets 2026 AI slop.
It’s an fascinating examine in how expertise that’s very a lot being constructed and hyped in trendy Seattle can be utilized for instance what the town type of regarded like greater than three many years in the past. Within the video, it’s two years earlier than the beginning of Amazon and one other 15ish earlier than cloud computing and a large tech increase actually reshaped the area.
AI is being each celebrated and derided for its potential to assist create content material like Roxy’s time-traveling exploits. The place some see an harmless, weirdly instructional historical past lesson, others can’t look previous the alternative of human creativity, the surplus of such materials polluting social media channels, and the tech’s potential to deceive viewers in additional harmful methods.
Roxy is an AI-generated influencer — not an actual individual — with a penchant for visiting traditionally important locations, each actual and imagined. She lately checked out L.A.’s Sundown Strip in 1987 and a New York speakeasy throughout Prohibition in 1929. In different movies she runs throughout fantastical figures together with Paul Bunyan and Humpty Dumpty, and he or she visits cavemen in 30,000 B.C.
Within the Seattle video, Roxy is dressed for the period’s half in a flannel, Nirvana T-shirt, ripped denims and fight boots. She begins her tour by saying she’s on the town to see the band Mudhoney play at Belltown’s Crocodile Cafe. However first she heads to Straightforward Avenue Data in West Seattle to browse data, tapes and CDs.
The video is populated with pictures of random musicians carrying guitars down the road, and folks consuming espresso and studying precise print publications as an alternative of observing laptops. At The Central Saloon and OK Resort in Pioneer Sq., everybody has lengthy hair, or a beanie, or each. Sweaty music followers in mosh pits appear to suit the timeline.
AI’s inventive limitations do come into focus in a number of spots, particularly when written phrases are displayed. The names of bands and golf equipment on music flyers — similar to Comet Tavern — are a jumbled mess. Identical goes for a few of the names on file dividers at Straightforward Avenue, the place the shop’s neon wording additionally breaks aside.
Again on the Crocodile, Roxy is in line to see Mudhoney, and he or she’s confused by a gap act named Pen Cap Chew. Inside, because the present begins, she realizes that Pen Cap Chew is definitely Nirvana, enjoying below the key moniker as a result of by that point the band was a worldwide sensation using the success of the album “Nevermind.”
In maybe probably the most practical demonstration of being in 1992 — in a membership the place nobody is aware of what a smartphone is but — Roxy ends the video by saying she must cease recording.
“I’m placing this factor away, I’ve gotta watch this,” she says.
No approach anybody would do this in 2026.
