AI-Made Zombie Film at NDP 2026 Sparks Singapore's 'AI Slop' Debate
Source: SCMP
An AI-generated short film shown during Singapore's National Day Parade has become the most argued-about piece of local filmmaking this year. Bersama Majulah, a four-minute spin-off of the Spore Fall franchise, depicts a spore outbreak sweeping a fictional city that mirrors Singapore's skyline —.
An AI-generated short film shown during Singapore's National Day Parade has become the most argued-about piece of local filmmaking this year. Bersama Majulah, a four-minute spin-off of the Spore Fall franchise, depicts a spore outbreak sweeping a fictional city that mirrors Singapore's skyline — complete with Marina Bay Sands, the ArtScience Museum and the Merlion.
Creator Joel Boh, showrunner of Spore Fall and managing director of the Singapore studio Edenstone, says the project is Southeast Asia's first human-written, AI-realised transmedia franchise. Humans write the story arcs and character motivations; AI handles the environments, visual effects and production scaling. Despite critics labelling it "AI slop" and questioning why local actors were not used, Boh reports a viewing retention rate of 85 to 93 per cent on YouTube — an unusually strong figure for any short-form content.
The reaction reveals the fault lines in Singapore's creative economy. Audiences, Boh argues, are curious enough to watch to the end — "just to leave a negative comment" — which he reads as hunger for connection colliding with discomfort about the medium. The debate is no longer hypothetical: AI-produced content is now landing in the country's most-watched national broadcast slot, and the conversation around it is exactly what the creator says he wanted: passionate, divided and impossible to ignore.
For filmmakers, the calculus is shifting fast. AI tools slash production costs and let small studios punch far above their weight, but they also raise uncomfortable questions about jobs, craft and what audiences will accept. The NDP slot signals that official Singapore is willing to give AI-made work a mainstream platform — a signal the local industry is still digesting as it weighs the trade-off between cost efficiency and creative credibility.
Why it matters for Singapore: This debate is happening on home turf because Singapore is trying to be both an AI hub and a serious creative industry. The Bersama Majulah backlash shows the two ambitions colliding in real time. How the country navigates questions of attribution, labour and artistic value around AI-generated media will shape whether its creative sector becomes a beneficiary of the AI wave or a casualty of it — and the answer will be watched well beyond the city-state.
