Chris First

From beer sales to AI creator

Chris First is a New York AI creator who describes himself as a creative technologist in generative AI: he experiments with AI creative tools, pushes them to their limits and helps the companies building them^[7][6]. On AI LIVE in October 2026 he said that about a year earlier he had been working a full-time job in beer sales, and that he had been doing AI for almost six years^[29]. His X bio says he founded a generative AI community on X with more than 250,000 members; AI LIVE has not been able to verify that figure or identify the community^[6].

Everything he makes carries the same signature: a hand-lettered white FIRST wordmark in the corner of the frame, which doubles as his end card^[3][19]. He has been on X since April 2015, and it is where his biggest moments have landed^[6][3].

Testing every model as it shipped

His YouTube channel reads like a log of the generative video boom. In November 2024 he posted Fallout World, a 44-second concept trailer of AI stills imagining a global Fallout game in Tokyo, London, New York, Paris, Shanghai, Sydney and San Francisco, two years before he built one you could play^[18]. A run of comedy shorts followed, including GEN News, a bulletin of AI fake news, and What Actually Happened, which uses AI to carry famous film scenes on past the cut^[8].

Through the first half of 2025 he tested new tools almost as fast as they launched: Runway's 4K upscaler side by side, Hailuo's voice cloning and subject reference, Luma Ray2 and Luma's Reframe outpainting, Adobe Firefly video effects, Google Veo game simulations, Pika, and a 4K restoration of John F. Kennedy's Moon speech with Topaz Labs' Project Starlight and Adobe Podcast's Enhance Speech^{[45][20][21][8]}. In May 2025 he made Neuralock, a Veo 3 sci-fi short about a company that extracts your brain so you can live for centuries in a virtual world^[22].

His reach came from the short, funny pieces. An eight-second Hailuo AI gag about the Golden Globes, posted on 6 January 2025, is his most watched YouTube video at more than 5.3 million views; a Sora 2 short from October 2025 passed 237,000, and a speculative Ferrari Luce first look in May 2026 passed 231,000^[25][26][27]. In between came spoof ads: the Banned Tesla Optimus Ad, a late-night infomercial for Tesla's robot at "only 4 payments of $6,942", and Fake Break, a commercial break of surreal products that do not exist^[19][23].

I experiment with AI creative tools, push them to their limits, and help the companies building them.

Chris First^[7]

Fallout: New York

On 28 September 2026 he revealed Fallout: New York, a fan-made Fallout set in New York that ran in a web browser, with quests, dialogue trees, V.A.T.S. and a working Pip-Boy^[3]. His post made one claim above all: "Zero texture files. Zero sound files. Every building, weapon, face and sound is generated by code."^[3] It passed 3.6 million views^[3].

He built it with Claude Opus 5.5. Press reports put the build at about five days, with him directing Claude and what was described as a studio of AI agents^[12][16]. Walking through the game on AI LIVE, he described about 290,000 lines of JavaScript in a single HTML file whose only download is Three.js: 1,824 textures painted at runtime, every sound synthesised, 49,000 colliders, 117 locations, 112 named characters and 262 dialogue trees^[34][3]. On the show he put the file at about 20MB; his New Rad City launch post says 22MB^[34][5]. "85% of what you saw of that game was one prompt," he said^[35].

"The suits got involved"

Three days later it was gone. On 1 October 2026 he took the game down after a cease-and-desist over the fallout.nyc domain and the Fallout IP, posting: "Sorry to everyone who enjoyed the game! But the suits got involved and the fun is over."^[4] In the same thread he asked Bethesda to make a Fallout game itself, so he would not have to^[4].

The takedown made international news. Insider Gaming reported that ZeniMax shut the game down almost as soon as it appeared, Kotaku grouped it with Activision's action against a generative AI Modern Warfare 2 project, and TweakTown, ixbt.games, Xboxygen, VidaExtra and Critical Hits followed^{[10][11][13][15][16][14][17]}. Not all of it was kind: FRVR's headline called it ugly and lumped him in with "AI slop bros" who forget how copyright works, and VidaExtra argued he had not even checked the series' lore^[12][14].

New Rad City

Six days after the takedown he launched New Rad City at newrad.city, rebuilt without the Fallout IP^[5][9]. In a Manhattan bombed in 1967, a volunteer named Eli Wayte wakes in 1989 beneath the Municipal Building; the game has 35 quests and three endings, and every model, texture and sound is still generated in code^[9]. His launch post led with the numbers: "After $6,500 in API credits and 25,000 people playing the first version in 24 hours, NEW RAD CITY is here."^[5]

Both figures come with context. On AI LIVE he explained that he ran Opus 5.5 on its Medium setting for about five days spread over two weeks, on a $200 Claude Max plan with one usage reset, and that $6,500 is what the same usage would have cost at raw API prices^[37]. And where the post says 24 hours, on the show he said 25,000 people played "in almost 40 hours over one weekend"^[5][36].

It's the seal's broken. You can make a vibe coded game right now.

Chris First^[36]

The Chris & Chris Show

On 13 October 2026, with Andrew Davis's flight delayed, he stepped in as guest co-host of AI LIVE Ep 134 at about half an hour's notice, which made it the Chris & Chris Show alongside host Chris Branch^[1]. The episode introduced his visit as a return to the show, recalling a roughly three-hour livestream he had once joined from an airport^[28]. Chris Branch had called him "my mate" on air the week before, when the game launched, and had talked in May about doing a show with him live from San Francisco^[39][41].

The episode's theme found itself: is all future video just code? He argued that code-based animation lets you change anything afterwards, instead of paying for a fresh generation on every small fix, and said he now asks Claude for product-launch-style 3D motion graphics rather than reaching for a video model^[1][32][46]. Midway through, he looked at his phone: "Looks like Epic Games wants to talk to me."^[33] He then showed New Rad City on air, and mentioned that he had shown a secret project to Wonder Studios that same day^[34][42]. No outcome of the Epic Games email had been made public when this page was written.

A week later, Ep 135 opened with an ad he had dropped into the hosts' group chat seconds before the show, and Chris Branch said the two plan to livestream his games together^[40].

How he works

He runs a stack of agents in parallel: two Claude Max 20x memberships, ChatGPT Pro and a $200 Grok agent he calls GrokBot, building seven projects at once across eight screens^[30][47]. GrokBot handles the business side, from finance dashboards to travel and hotel predictions^[31].

Whoever has the vision can make things come to life now.

Chris First^[38]