Belgian video startup AiCandy released a spoof advertisement that imagines a 2036 gym called Energym where humans pedal and row to generate power for AI, featuring AI-aged versions of Elon Musk, Sam Altman and Jeff Bezos. The founders, Hans Buyse and Jan De Loore, debuted the clip after launching AiCandy in 2025, and designed it to highlight AI's energy appetite while using video-generation techniques.
The 40-second Reel blends fitness-culture visuals with satirical voice lines about job loss and purpose, and it intentionally portrays elder versions of familiar tech figures to underline the concept. The founders leaned on motion-design and generative video tools to craft the aged likenesses and cinematic gym scenes, then circulated the clip on Instagram and X where it amassed millions of views.
For consumers and creators, the Energym ad matters as a cultural touchpoint that uses generative video to spark debate about AI's social costs and spectacle value. Its virality shows how synthetic media can frame future-focused anxieties in compact, shareable narratives while also driving business inquiries for small studios.
Image Credit: AiCandy
What's Driving This Trend
- Synthetic-culture Satire
- Satirical synthetic media that blends cultural critique with entertainment opens potential for new narrative formats that monetize social commentary while shaping public discourse.
- Generative-video Virality
- Short-form, AI-generated video content optimized for social platforms creates scalable pathways for small studios to achieve rapid audience reach and client demand.
- Age-progressed Celebrity Likenesses
- Hyperreal aging of public figures via generative tools enables monetizable immersive storytelling and nostalgia-driven IP products that reframe celebrity engagement.
Who This Affects Most
- Advertising-and-marketing
- AI-driven creative production tools reduce traditional production costs and enable personalized, high-frequency campaign variants that shift client expectations around speed and scale.
- Fitness-tech-and-energy-harvesting
- Concepts combining human activity with energy capture suggest new product categories where wellness experiences are integrated with microgeneration hardware and data-driven incentives.
- Legal-and-rights-management
- The proliferation of synthetic likenesses raises demand for novel licensing, attribution, and verification services that redefine intellectual property governance and compliance frameworks.
