'AI is the new VR' – Edward Saatchi, Fable Studio

Basilisk is a cantankerous ‘virtual being’ –  an unreliable AI-powered storyteller for our times, a digital trickster which seeks to know you better than you know yourself.

Its story – part egocentric manifesto, part semi-fictional memoir – plays out in a mind-melting Virtual Reality  sandbox of its own creation – designed to disorient, amaze, and persuade, drawing unwitting participants inexorably deeper into its murky web.

Breathing life into Basilisk  and driving its narrative, we are creating a new Character Engine, powered by AI and deep reinforcement learning – enabling a new generation of storytelling virtual beings, of which Basilisk is the first or perhaps (if it gets its own way) the last.

Basilisk was part of Arts Council England and the UK Digital Catapult’s Creative XR programme in 2019, and was invited to participate in SXSW 2020.

‍'I wish I had never learned about any of these ideas.' – Roko

Basilisk is rooted in a 2012 thought experiment from the online Rationalist community Less Wrong, about the potential risks involved in developing artificial intelligence. The premise: that an all-powerful AI from the future could retroactively punish those who did not help bring about its existence, including those who merely knew of its development. You are warned.