by 
Escape.ai, the AI-driven storytelling platform founded by Academy Award-winning visual effects designer John Gaeta (The Matrix), is moving from web and mobile screens into the living room. The company recently launched its first connected TV app, bringing its catalog of AI-assisted short films and episodic storytelling to major platforms, including Roku and The Roku Channel, Amazon Fire TV, Samsung Smart TVs, and LG TVs.
The expansion is powered by a distribution partnership with Play.Works, a connected TV specialist whose technology already underpins games and ad-supported video channels across smart TVs, streaming devices, and cable operator interfaces. Collectively, the platforms supported by Play.Works reach more than 400 million connected TV devices worldwide.
“Escape.ai is not just a channel, it is an entirely new frontier for cinema,” Gaeta said in the announcement. “By partnering with Play.Works, we are bringing creators and audiences together in a new entertainment space built for the connected generation, instantly available in the living room.”
Escape.ai has positioned itself as a curated destination for what it calls Neo Cinema, a mix of short-form films, episodic series, animation, and genre experiments created using generative AI tools alongside traditional filmmaking workflows. The platform hosts more than a thousand creator-led projects spanning science fiction, fantasy, anime, horror, comedy, and music-driven storytelling.
“All of this is about getting Neo Cinema to a global audience,” Gaeta wrote in an email exchange over the weekend. “It is essentially a new theater system, one that gives creators an opportunity to push original and ambitious story worlds and series to scale.”
The connected TV distribution is handled entirely by Play.Works, a privately held company founded by former television executives that specializes in bringing games and ad-supported video to smart TV environments. Play.Works is integrated into Samsung and LG gaming hubs, Roku, Fire TV, Vizio, Comcast, Charter, and Sky platforms in the US and Europe.
“So when programmatic advertising on connected TV really started to work, we asked ourselves what else should live on the TV,” said Play.Works’ founder and CEO, Jonathan Boltax in an interview. “Our answer was TV on the TV. Creator-driven content distributed at scale.”
Play.Works operates an advertising-based model similar to mobile games, using pre-roll, mid-roll, and rewarded ads sold programmatically. Revenue is typically shared between the distributor, platform owner, and content partner. Escape.ai does not currently charge subscriptions on connected TVs.
“We have a very sophisticated programmatic ad stack for connected TV,” Boltax said. “For Escape, we are serving ads inside the experience just like we would for anybody else.”
On connected TVs, escape.ai appears as a downloadable app or, in some environments, as a destination embedded within a platform’s interface. Navigation is designed around standard remotes, with curated collections and genre groupings adapted from the web experience.
Boltax said Escape is the company’s first AI-focused partner on the video side. “We work with over 150 YouTube creators today,” he said. “Escape is the first partner centered on AI native storytelling.”
The move places escape.ai’s catalog under the scrutiny of large living room screens, where AI-generated imagery can reveal compression artifacts and inconsistencies that are less visible on phones and laptops. Gaeta has acknowledged that risk but views it as part of the maturation process.
“The standards are high on 4K sets,” he wrote. “That is exactly the right condition to see the technology and methods mature, as they have with every digital filmmaking tool before.”
The escape.ai app is now live on Roku and The Roku Channel, Amazon Fire TV, Samsung Smart TVs, and LG TVs, with Apple TV support planned. For AI-driven cinema, the launch represents one of the clearest attempts yet to move experimental generative storytelling out of niche platforms and into the mainstream connected TV ecosystem.
Header image credit: Adam Kenton on Unsplash
Charlie Fink is the author of the AR-enabled books “Metaverse,” (2017) and “Convergence” (2019). In the early 90s, Fink was EVP & COO of VR pioneer Virtual World Entertainment. He teaches at Chapman University in Orange, CA.