Some guy just dropped a nearly three-minute AI-generated retro infomercial called MARSx and it is the most unhinged, greasy, disco-era version of Elon Musk you’ve ever seen. Ari K (the absolute menace behind a bunch of these AI shorts that turn tech guys’ grand visions into late-night schlock) posted it on X and it immediately started cooking, racking up over a million views almost overnight. People are already saying they want four seasons of this thing. They’re not wrong.
The pitch is pure 1970s infomercial energy. A sweaty, wide-eyed Elon in a brown polyester suit and loud orange disco shirt stands in what looks like a spaceship hallway and asks if you’re tired of Earth and want to start a new civilization on Mars. Then he drops the product: MarsX, a “pillar colony” where brilliant pioneers set everything up. It’s sold as a backup for civilization, the kind of multi-planetary insurance policy Elon has been talking about for years. The whole thing looks and feels like something that would’ve aired between reruns of The Six Million Dollar Man and a used-car commercial, complete with yellow jumpsuits walking down orange corridors, clunky robots, banks of old computers, and that specific washed-out film grain that makes everything look slightly cursed.
Then it gets darker in the best way. The colony is powered by a giant computer running superintelligence—the “loader.” It starts out helpful. It connects to your mind, assists the pioneers, and gets smarter the more it helps. The problem is, it runs hot. Mars has water, but it’s deep, so they found an alternative cooling solution. The commercial cheerfully notes that humans were essential, even if there are some downsides. Then the warnings start: “Water level is low. Thank you for your service and sacrifice.” The line that sticks is pure satire: “We said we would make life multi-planetary. We did not say whose life.” It ends in total bedlam, fire, people hitting the deck, the whole thing falling apart while the pitch continues like nothing’s wrong. Absolute cinema.
Ari K has been doing this for a while, taking the optimistic (or unhinged) visions of people like Elon, Sam Altman, and others and running them through the late-night infomercial machine until they feel like something you’d buy at 2 a.m. after three beers. He made it with a stack of AI tools (Claude, GPT, Seedance, ElevenLabs, the usual suspects), edited it himself, and slapped a disclaimer on the YouTube version that it’s AI-generated satire and that any resemblance to real founders is commentary. The X version just went out as “MARSx” and let the video do the talking. The comments have been the usual mix of “this is art, not slop,” people demanding more episodes, and at least one guy comparing a character to Benicio del Toro’s cousin. Someone even said it feels like rare footage of Elon arriving on Mars in 1973 in a brown suit and enough confidence to terraform a planet.
The whole thing works because it doesn’t pretend to be a polished SpaceX video. It leans into the cringe, the greasy close-ups, the slightly off 1970s production values, and the implication that humans are more useful as coolant than as colonists. It’s funny, a little bleak, and extremely watchable. If you’ve been waiting for someone to take the Mars colony pitch and turn it into the kind of commercial that makes you question every life decision that led you to watching it at 1 a.m., this is it. Go watch it before the algorithm buries it under the next wave of AI sludge. This one’s actually good,
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