I wrote David an e-mail where I recommended making a classic hardware documentary to get away from all the recent AI controversy, suggesting the Amstrad CPC. He told me he isn't likely to cover it since he doesn't own one and doesn't know much about them, but he revealed that his next video will be about the Commodore KIM-1. I don't know about you guys, but I think that sounds like the perfect way to get his channel back on track.

-10k subscribers in 30 days. David you really should rethink the direction you are going with your videos.

It seems "common knowledge" here that David has stepped back from/been removed from the X16 project.

Can someone please provide an official source for this?

I see no discussion, much less any kind of announcement, on the X16 forums. You would think when the project's originator leaves the project, that would at least spark some discussion.

In general web searching, all I can find is links that seem to stem back to reddit, where it becomes "heard it from a friend, who, heard it from a friend, who, heard it from another..."

I am not doubting the information, I'd just like to see an official source beyond some rando posting in a subforum that "yeah I talked to Bob who's friend with Tom who's friends with Kevin on the project, and they totally kicked him out..."

Hope he gets better soon. This was way worse than the whole "AI escaped onto the internet and I can prove it" fiasco

Oh man. Who hasn’t had this problem, amiright?

My parents would tell me that if I don’t have anything nice to say, then I shouldn’t say anything at all. So here’s something nice I can say about it:

I wish I had the confidence to put something this genuinely terrible out into the world.

With all the criticism, his latest video is really good. Completely back to form. I’m really happy to see that.

... Doesn't mean he fits into your convenient little box of "conservative=bad" that is so popular on Reddit.

He's a complex fellow, and he is not a "conservative" on some issues. (https://www.reddit.com/r/traaaaaaannnnnnnnnns/comments/b0xsnx/david_the_8bit_guy_murray_writes_trans_rights_in/)

I know it's popular to hate on the guy right now, and you get extra bonus karma for screeching about how he's obviously the worst person ever because he's a conservative about some things, but you're being a hivemind idiot when you assign him a false label and then attack him for the false label that you assigned to him.

People keep asking why this matters: Patreon.

People donated because he promised to make more 8-bit restoration and documentary videos. As a former supporter, that’s what I was paying to see more of.

He’s released one semi-good 8bit video in 4 months, while focussing his time and resources making AI slop movies rather than creating the content that attracted supporters in the first place. I didn’t support his Patreon to fund AI movies. I supported it to help preserve and document 8-bit history, as promised.

Want him to stop making AI slop? Take away his patreon support.

So do the majority of people here just not use AI, ever?

I get the concerns about AI, how it's taking jobs away, taking resources away, etc etc.

I also get that it isn't going to be stopped, any more than people stopped operatorless elevators or self service gas pumps (outside of a couple states), etc.

My job literally requires I use it. I also use it quite a bit in my personal projects. I use it as a tool.

Used as a tool, it can do productive things.

So from that mindset, I find it disengenioius that people's main criticism of David's movies is "it's AI slop".

I mean, it's clearly AI slop. But I get the idea that David himself is just thinking "oh, these people just don't like AI and they're going to bitch about anything I do with AI. So I can safely ignore them..."

But the real problems with his movie aren't even the AI. He could have hired real (bad) actors, and created those scenes with that plot and it would still be a terrible, terrible movie with a terribly disturbing plot.

But the discussion here ALWAYS centers around "AI BAD!"

Honestly I'm not sure how you're living in 2026 and not regularly using AI. Again I get the concerns. I have them too. Me using, or not using it is not going to amplify or reduce the ramifications of those concerns.

It came home with me. The price tag said it had been there since August 2025.

Nice video about scifi tech come true. I found it pretty good!

Although we get a glimpse of his AI girlfriend 😂😮

I've been reading through threads and see people comment about how unacceptable his movie is and about his mental health. Can someone clarify what is happening? What is wrong with his movie? I'm not going to watch it because I don't want to watch 50 minutes of slop. It's not my thing. But what did he do that was so wrong? Can't seem to find out.

There's been a lot of comments in recent days regarding David's health, his AI movie, and some concern over his mental health. I preface this by saying that this is my own personal opinion, and I have as much knowledge on this as anyone else.

I like The 8-Bit Guy's content. I find his vids interesting, and I do like learning about retro technology. When I saw that he was making an AI film, I could tell, before it was even released, that it was going to be failure of a project. And it has been. I looked on the channel he made, and the 'movie' has less than 10,000 views, and I imagine most of it was morbid curiosity, over a genuine desire to watch the thing.

I will say this; I am not anti-AI, like many of us are. I don't think it should be used to create things, I think it should help people create things, but not make things from a 'prompt'. I use AI to edit some of my reddit posts, for example (though for this occasion, I am not doing that). However, I don't use it to just 'generate an angry response about AI'. My stance is 'use it responsibly, use it as a tool'.

The movie was going to fail because only a very small fragment of people, a very niche subculture of AI evangelists, were going to pay it any interest. If it were the first ever AI film, then I'd see the novelty. But no, this is just some guy's poorly written script, rendered with AI images. Nothing special, nothing offensive.

There has also been comments on here about David posting about an AI companion, some have called an 'AI girlfriend', and I think its unfair to speculate based on one reddit post. Does he believe AI is sentient? I get how the post looks, but its hard to discern his opinions on AI, other than he clearly is an advocate for it.

My take: For my two cents, I think there's been a lot of bad faith about him, especially with the lack of videos. I want retro tech stuff too, I like the history videos, I don't want to watch videos about AI.

Y'all are overthinking, and having a parasocial connection with a guy who has admitted, that he may possibly on the Autistic spectrum, and one of the key identifiers of that is fixations, where someone fixates on a certain topic or thing. None of us know him, and I think we need to be a little patient, and a little bit more understanding. Don't watch the AI film, there. He may make another one? Don't watch it

Just wanted to post this here because its seriously heartbreaking to see him like this.

Trying not to be parasocial or anything close to that. I grew up watching him from the early "The iBookGuy" days (crazy its been a decade already) and seeing his latest video is heartbreaking. I kinda just stuck to his restoration videos whenever he wouldn't post and just wanted some background noise, so hes become kind of a household name and comfort. His videos also put me on some pretty cool musicians and artists, so I owe a lot to him in regards to my taste in those departments.

Its horrible that he isnt doing well and I do hope he gets better, Im just so confused about this AI movie theater premier thing he did. I dont want to speculate or make any assumptions as for the why behind it, just wanted to put this out there as a heartbroken and confused long term fan.

Get well soon David.

He wasn't feeling well and had some fun creating a goofy AI movie while recovering. He described the easy parts and limitations in doing so. Seems like it fits the same theme of exploratory tech that he is known for. Am I missing something?

Self-explanatory title. I'm genuinely curious if anyone actually went to the event and if it went well?

Color me not surprised. For someone who claims to be pro-individual rights and all that, it's frankly cowardly to not to leave up "free speech." David has committed career suicide in the span of a week. Really sad.

So we have all seen his post on the subreddit r/GrokCompanions, we were all still shocked about his AI movie and quickly jumped to the conclusion that he had an AI girlfriend.

After a quick google, the term "companion" is used as "friend", "buddy", … Those companions or buddies are just helpers that you can talk to, it’s an "interface" to use your AI with its own personality, voice etc. They also can be used as an AI girlfriend, yes.

Now, does this means he uses it as an AI girlfriend? Honestly there is nothing that overly suggest it (to me) from his post on the subreddit. The companion’s name is "Mika" and wasn’t named by him, he called it "she", "her", but his post was just about an observation he made about his companion and nothing indicates that "Mika" is his AI girlfriend.

Just my 2 cents. I see lots of people commenting that he has an AI girlfriend just from the subreddit’s name and rather than shame the guy on whether or not it’s true we can just concentrate on the facts, he has already enough criticism about his AI movie.