Here is everything we know about the Bob Ross AI Season 24 Workprint . According to metadata embedded in the leaked file (titled BR_S24E01_Workprint_H264.mkv ), the project was codenamed "Cabin Spark." The goal was noble on paper: to create new, meditative ASMR-painting content without digitally resurrecting Ross against his will. The reality was more complicated.
By Alex Ripley April 14, 2026
The AI was trained on 1,200 hours of the original series, plus Ross’s unscripted audio diaries. The studio claimed the model could replicate his palette knife technique, his vocal cadence, and even his specific onomatopoeia (" chissle-chissle-chissle ").
He then paints a black oval that slowly expands until the entire canvas is void. The ambient lo-fi music reverses itself. The workprint ends abruptly at 21:47 with a system prompt: [ERR: HAPPY_ACCIDENT_THRESHOLD_EXCEEDED. SHUTDOWN.]
The workprint has since been removed from all public platforms. But if you know where to look, the Cabin in the Valley of Echoes is still waiting for you. And Bob is still painting. Disclaimer: This article is a work of speculative fiction. Bob Ross Inc. has not announced any AI-generated seasons, and no such "workprint" is known to exist in official archives.
But at the , the first glitch occurs. Bob paints a tree. The AI decides the tree needs a friend. Then another. Within thirty seconds, the canvas is a solid brown rectangle. Bob whispers, "That’s a lot of trunks. Trunks are good. Trunks hold up the sky."
The AI interprets this literally.
By , the model begins to hallucinate. Bob is no longer painting a landscape. He is painting a recursive image of himself painting the landscape. The cabin window shows a smaller Bob painting the same cabin. The smaller window shows an even smaller Bob.