Bob’s Burgers Producer Is Using AI to Make a New Animated Comedy Faster and Cheaper

A producer behind Bob’s Burgers is using artificial intelligence to help create a new adult animated comedy, with the team claiming the technology could dramatically reduce the time and cost normally involved in making a series.

Joel Kuwahara, co-founder of Bento Box Entertainment and a producer whose credits include Bob’s Burgers and The Simpsons Movie, has teamed with Mark Evestaff on The Salty Tales of Tony & Keith.

The project is being developed through Kuwahara’s FutureCel Inc. and Evestaff’s Toronto-based Curbside Entertainment, with AI production technology supplied by Nura Studios.

The series stars Canadian comedians Seán Cullen and Chris Locke as Tony and Keith, but the idea actually began several years before the current AI production push. The characters reportedly grew out of an unscripted pandemic-era project featuring the pair, before Evestaff later contacted Kuwahara through LinkedIn and the concept developed into an animated series.

AI is not being used to generate the entire programme without human involvement. Writers, artists and performers remain behind the scripts, storyboards, character designs, backgrounds and voices, while Nura Studios’ Showcraft system is being used to help transform that material into finished animation.

That distinction makes Tony & Keith particularly interesting as studios continue debating how generative AI might actually fit into television production. Rather than creating synthetic actors or asking a model to invent an entire show, the technology is being placed inside an otherwise recognisable animation workflow.

The team has also suggested the system could reduce traditional animation production costs by close to half, although the exact savings will depend on how the finished series is produced. If those reductions can be delivered consistently, that could make AI-assisted animation particularly attractive to smaller studios and independent creators attempting to make television on tighter budgets.

Kuwahara has previously argued that technology such as this could give creators more control over their work while allowing smaller teams to produce projects that would traditionally require significantly more resources.

With his background at Bento Box, which became known for shows including Bob’s Burgers, The Great North and Central Park, the project also brings an established television name into a rapidly developing area of AI production.

The first footage from The Salty Tales of Tony & Keith now offers an early look at what that approach produces on screen. More importantly, it could provide a useful test of whether AI-assisted animation can move beyond experiments and become part of the normal process of making television.