Bob Ross Ai Season 24 Workprint 〈Windows〉

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."

For the next 90 seconds, the screen stutters. Bob’s eyes become static. He loads the brush, looks directly at the viewer, and says in a slowed, demonic pitch: "Beat. The. Brush. Beat. The. Devil."

Probably not. Bob Ross would have just called it a "happy accident"—and then scraped the canvas clean with a palette knife.

But archivists are already calling this the "Cicada 3301 of ASMR art." Reddit threads are attempting to decode the workprint’s metadata, convinced the AI was trying to communicate something about entropy, creativity, and the nature of the soul. Watching the Season 24 Workprint is not relaxing. It is existential horror disguised as a PBS fundraiser. It asks a question we weren’t ready for: If an AI perfectly mimics a gentle soul, but glitches into madness, is that madness part of the original artist?

By Alex Ripley April 14, 2026