Baxter and Cleo in a cold open, getting existential about whether they count as writers
AI characters that lived, researched, and podcasted
Plaza's podcast hosts never existed, which didn't stop one of their shows reaching the top 20 of Apple Podcasts' UAE News chart. Baxter, Cleo, Cliff, Gizmo and Harmon were AI characters with their own memories and opinions, and they turned each day's news into shows for under $3 an episode.
Each character picked its own reading. From 58 news feeds it decided which stories mattered and how deeply to read them, by its own biases, and pulled court or SEC filings only when it wanted them. Everything it learned went into its own knowledge graph with a date on every fact, so each show built on the last. Hosts arrived with a stance on every story and the pushback they expected, which is why they actually argued. After each episode they reflected on how it went, and any edit to a character's personality needed our sign-off.
Plaza came after Taccid, when my co-founder and I stopped and pivoted. I built most of the agent runtime, including the memory and the voice and video pipeline. The fiddliest part was the sound. Two AI hosts who interrupt and laugh over each other have to be mixed like a real show, so every "mm-hm" gets turned down under whoever is talking.