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The Turkish production is billed as an AI-first streaming milestone, but human creative contributions complicate that label—and a scathing review challenges its artistic payoff.
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Prime Video has added a Turkish drama made largely with generative video to its global catalog, putting AI-generated television into a major streamer’s regular lineup rather than a demo setting. Ay Yapım’s Castle Walls runs two 17-minute episodes, but “end-to-end” does not mean a people-free workflow: Kerem Deren and Çisil Hazal Tenim wrote the scripts, and human voice actors performed. The release marks a distribution milestone, not a critical endorsement; The Guardian’s review was sharply negative.
Ay Yapım used a mixture of generative video tools to produce the two episodes.
The 11th-century story follows Hasan Sabbah’s attempt to claim Alamut Castle and recruit the imprisoned warrior Azazil.
The Guardian described the series as billed as the first end-to-end AI-created series to premiere on a major streaming platform.
AI-generated television now sits alongside conventional series and films on Prime Video. Amazon has released Castle Walls globally, a Turkish melodrama whose visuals were largely made with AI, according to The Ankler. Its arrival pairs a major distribution milestone with a more complicated question: what does “AI-created” mean when people still write and perform?
Produced by Turkish company Ay Yapım, Castle Walls consists of two 17-minute episodes. The company used a mixture of generative video tools to make the series. Rather than a behind-the-scenes experiment or an isolated demonstration, the resulting melodrama is streaming in Amazon’s catalog alongside conventionally produced entertainment.
The story takes place in the 11th century around the historic Alamut Castle. It follows Hasan Sabbah, who arrives intent on claiming the castle, and his effort to recruit the warrior Azazil from its dungeons. The setting gives the production castles, armies, horseback journeys and sweeping landscapes to render.
In his Guardian review, Luke Buckmaster describes an opening sequence that moves from a caged eagle crossing a desert to a distant castle and men arriving on horseback.
The Guardian describes Castle Walls as billed as the first end-to-end AI-created series to premiere on a major streaming platform.
The production used human voice actors, and the Guardian reports that Kerem Deren and Çisil Hazal Tenim wrote the scripts.
This is not a production that bypassed human skill; it is one that used AI to amplify it.
Ay Yapım, quoted by the Guardian
Buckmaster’s Guardian review asks whether the resulting images and storytelling work as television—and delivers a sharply negative verdict.
He initially found the opening palette of blues, browns and yellows intriguing. But the appearance of the characters broke that appeal: he compares them to wax figures melting in the sun. His objection is not a lack of visual ambition. It is that grand imagery overwhelms the frame without producing a convincing sense of people, time or place.
Buckmaster also criticizes the pacing, repeated metaphors involving snakes, blood and fire, and the dialogue. He acknowledges the technology’s power and suggests early AI productions may be overtaken by more sophisticated work, but does not treat technical novelty as an artistic achievement on its own.
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