This isn't an exciting glimpse of technology. These commercials just feel like sad visions of how money and influence can't buy you happiness or reliable companionship. One day, you too can have oodles of cash and end up talking to your appliances like your Moe Syzlack trading barbs with The Love-Matic Grandpa.
Way smarter people than me have already pointed this out ad nauseum, but these commercials also feature endless, eerie undercurrents that demonize vulnerability or imperfections. Do NOT show up to a social gathering without knowing everything about soccer. Do NOT examine books or the larger world around you. Just ask your Amazon-approved appliance. A.I. slop imagery, meanwhile, is all about coating everything in an eerie, sterile sheen placing everything these machines create in the Uncanny Valley. They're disgusting simulations of creativity, not actual artistic endeavors reflecting blood, sweat, tears, and a human being laying bare some innermost part of themselves.
As we navigate a Silicon Valley Hellscape where the rich run rampant without consequence and generative A.I. nightmares are abundant, we could use quality homegrown art now more than ever. What better time, then, for The Muppets to return to pop culture. The stars of this past week's new Muppet Show TV special have always epitomized the joys of handmade artistry and making art with other people.
From the very beginning, the Muppet characters, pioneered and created by Jim Henson, Frank Oz, Richard Hunt, and so many others, exuded delightful, rickety attributes. I'm personally fond of those 1950s Wilkin's Coffee Commercials, starring proto-Kermit character Wilkin's perpetually torturing Wontkins for not enjoying Wilkin's Coffee. You can practically see the paintbrush strokes populating the thrown-together backgrounds, while the Wilkin and Wontkins puppets are sparsely designed. However, those qualities are immensely charming, not a drawback. To boot, they allow more room for imaginative demises for Wontkins and deeply detailed (and hysterical) performances from Wilkins.
These ads also established the violent chaos that the Muppets would be known for. These aren't just characters meant to sell Pizza Hut products in the 2000s. They're known for blowing up places with dynamite, kidnapping Jack Black, and accidentally setting rats instead of lamps on fire. You never know what bizarre mayhem will unfold with these beings. Wilkins and Wontkins perfectly established that with their dark comedy shenanigans (like placing a bomb in a house, kicking Wontkins out of a tree, or wiping blood off a sword) that I can't believe they got away with on 1950s television.
Generative A.I. is all about regurgitating pre-existing art and giving people sickening, warped visions of what they've seen before. Right from the start in those Wilkin's Coffee ads and various Sam & Friends skits (the latter of which is where Kermit first properly premiered), though, The Muppets embraced enthralling unpredictability. Oh, and the innate humorousness of random explosions.
With The Muppet Show in the 70s, Kermit and his troupe of wackadoodle friends (Fozzie, Gonzo, Scooter, Miss Piggy, etc.) established another pivotal motif of Muppet media that spits right in the face of generative A.I.: artistic collaboration. The Wilkin's Coffee commercials were about two characters quarreling over a coffee brand. Budgetary constraints limited how many characters could be on-screen at once in Sam & Friends. The Muppet Show and feature films like The Muppet Movie, meanwhile, saw Kermit leading an ensemble of characters who were all working together (or, more often than not, crashing into one another) to make a show possible.
That creative crusade is built on a desire to create art with their own two hands (or flippers). Art that often doesn't go right. Fozzie's jokes rarely land like they're supposed to. Gonzo's stunts or trumpet playing never follow expectations. Poor Kermit never sees any of his best-laid plans come to fruition. Amazon, Meta, and other Silicon Valley companies would likely see these outcomes as impetuses to shill for generative A.I. products that could "solve" their struggles.
The Muppets, meanwhile, see their jagged imperfections as delightful. Gonzo, Fozzie, The Electric Mayhem, Rowlf, they're always out there the next week or movie, ready to pursue their artistic passions once more. As Sunny Moraine put it on Blue Sky: "A small but very deep thing that bothers me about generative AI as a shortcut to practice and work and skill is the basic assumption that it’s impossible to take pleasure in a creative pursuit that you aren’t very good at and I assure you that is not the case." The Muppets thrive on that pleasure and create special art in the process.
When it's not about stealing art, generative A.I. ads and technology emphasize a lonely status quo where people only need to talk to Alexa and ChatGPT tools for "information" and companionship. Meanwhile, throughout the most memorable Muppet productions, the very act of singing and dancing brings people together and uncovers unseen depths in one's soul. With each Muppet Christmas Carol musical number ("When Love is Gone", "It Feels Like Christmas", etc.), fresh layers of Michael Caine's Ebenezer Scrooge are unearthed. How does Scrooge eventually signify that he's bonded with the larger world? Why by singing "Thankful Heart" with everyone, of course. 19 years later, The Muppets featured a bevy of delightful Bret McKeznie-penned ditties that helped newcomer Muppet Walter (a lifelong outcast) discover just where he belonged. To boot, tunes like "Life's a Happy Song" get so much of their euphoric and toe-tapping spirit from being crooned by large groups of people.
You could spend your days alone talking to an Alexa or wasting entire lakes to create the ugliest A.I. generated art known to man. Or you could take a cue from those lovable Muppets and embrace the wider, tangible world around. There's so much vibrant humanity to bear witness to. Who needs a hideous digital, Elon Musk-endorsed simulacrum of art and human interactions?
This all feeds into a profoundly important core of the Muppets: they need each other and their idiosyncratic personalities. Week in, week out, no matter how crazy they drive each other, they'll always reunite to put on a new show. Animal and his loudness needs the sage, ivory-tickling chops of Rowlf the Dog. Ladies man prawn Pepe needs the stiff and uptight Sam the Eagle. Pragmatic Rizzo needs devil-may-care stuntman Gonzo. What makes these characters and their passions different is also what binds them together.
Kermit himself emphasized this in The Muppet Movie's deeply moving finale, where he told the villainous Doc Hooper...
"Well, I have a dream too, but it’s about singing and dancing and making people happy. It’s the kind of dream that gets better the more people you share it with. And I found a whole group of friends who have the same dream, and that makes us sort of like a family."
A life talking only to appliances and spewing out images plagiarizing pre-existing works sounds like an empty and hollow life. The Muppets, meanwhile, epitomize the joys of discovering people who aren't exactly like you, who look different from you, who have different dreams and ambitions, and creating art with them. Not the "best" art or art that Silicon Valley moguls deem "proper." Jagged, imperfect art that comes from your soul, that only a frog from a swamp, a whatever with a chicken, or someone like you, dear reader, could create.
Those qualities were on full display in February 2026's incredibly endearing Muppet Show special. In the universe of this fictional program, these Muppets are once more bursting with enthusiasm for performing and each other. Doors falling down? An overcrowded schedule? Chickens unexpectedly losing feathers? No matter! The show goes on! Externally, though, it was also great to see little details like a discernible puppet rod on Kermit's arm when he's plucking away on a banjo. These elements subtly harken back to the days of Sam & Friends and those Wilkin's Commercials in reinforcing the homemade charm of the Muppets.
Kermit and pals aren't CG beings striving to simulate reality. Their strings and reminders of their human performers are sometimes visible. Isn't it wonderful? While digital de-aging in The Flash or generative A.I. art makes me want to throw up, the techniques used to make Kermit play a banjo on a log in The Muppet Movie still captivate me. Human ingenuity always reigns supreme. Especially when it's servicing characters as hystericalas Rowlf the Dog and Uncle Deadly.
We need each other and our distinctive artistic perspectives, not generative A.I. monstrosities. Meanwhile, as video essayist Dan Olson pointed out, the modern surge of right-wing fascist politicians thrives on nihilism and contempt for other people. The Muppet's undaunted enthusiasm and embrace of communal joys are the perfect respite for those toxic norms. Let's keep making art and working together for a better tomorrow, no matter how many things go haywire in the process. "Keep believing, keep pretending," The Muppet Movie's character harmonizes in that feature's final scene. Cling to that mantra in these challenging times. And maybe also cling to a cup of Wilkin's Coffee. You never know when that psychoapth Wilkin's will show up to ask about your feelings vis-a-vis this brand...
