Former Foxtel, BBC Worldwide exec Guy Gadney rolls out AI tool to make microdramas

Upcoming Charismatic.ai comedy microdrama The Purrfect Employee

Former Foxtel and BBC Worldwide executive Guy Gadney has launched what he claims is the world’s first generative AI platform for the creation of microdramas.

UK-based platform Charismatic.ai is promising to “re-write the rules of shortform storytelling” and is marketed towards creators, agencies and brands, asserting that it can help them generate idea-to-animated narrative content in under 15 minutes.

It has been developed with research partners including UK pubcaster Channel 4, Wallace & Gromit prodco Aardman Animations and digital ethicist Lisa Talia Moretti.

Charismatic.ai lets users input a single prompt, such as “Gen Z heist” or “football adventure”, to instantly generate animated episodic drama content. It integrates with video generation models such as Veo3 to turn concepts, audience data and advertising briefs into bite-sized, serialised stories.

The product has been designed to exploit the boom in shortform storytelling on social media and video-sharing platforms such as TikTok and YouTube Shorts.

Forthcoming titles produced by Charismatic.ai include comedy microdrama The Purrfect Employee and animated microdrama Graveyard Shift.

Gadney, who has produced major interactive productions for the likes of Sky, the BBC and numerous production companies around the world having previously worked for Foxtel and BBC Worldwide, said: “Charismatic.ai is a scalable creative pipeline built for agencies, media networks, and creators.

“Our focus on good storytelling is the missing link in AI developments, and having worked closely with creators across TV, film, YouTube and TikTok, we are now able to deliver a world-first solution that connects short-form content like microdramas with quality narratives.”

It is not the first platform to have recently claimed to be a “world first” in the microdrama space, with Cyprus-based Shortly making a similar claim earlier this month ahead of its launch.

It comes after Gadney attended C21’s Create London event in April, where he hosted a cross-creative sector workshop and was a speaker on a panel session looking at how generative AI is supercharging the creator economy.

At the event, Charismatic.ai announced a partnership with Media Stream AI for an AI-driven content-creation pipeline that promises to generate hyper-personalised narrative TV content for global audiences and digital networks.