[LAB] Hot Wheels AI Experiment

For my son’s party, I wanted to make a story he could step inside.

Using Foundry, our internal AI creation tool, I built a living story set inside the Hot Wheels universe. The kids entered through a glowing portal, steered cars with their hands, and jumped to rebuild a broken track. Every movement pushed the narrative forward. It was two minutes of chaos, laughter, and pure imagination.

And beneath all of it, every visual, sound, and line of dialogue was created entirely with AI.

When the portal opened, my son screamed. When it ended, he asked to do it again. And again.

He wasn’t watching someone else’s adventure. He was inside it.

Foundry had generated his likeness and placed him in the story. For two minutes, he wasn’t a kid in a living room. He was the hero of Hot Wheels City.

That moment captured what we’re chasing at Forged. The line between audience and story disappears, and what’s left is pure presence.

Building with Foundry

Foundry began as a way to connect different AI models into a single creative system.

It works like a visual playground where text, image, video, and sound generation can be chained together like ideas on a whiteboard. Each node represents a step in the process: a prompt, a transformation, a creative decision.

In the Hot Wheels project, Foundry generated everything: the portal world, the car animations, the sound design, the music, even the narrator’s voice. Once those assets existed, code became the glue that made them come alive.

We used TensorFlow for body tracking so the system could respond in real time. When the kids jumped, the broken bridge reappeared. When they turned invisible wheels in the air, their cars responded on screen. Their actions weren’t just inputs. They were part of the story’s fabric.

It was the first time we used AI not just as a production tool but as the writer, the animator, the composer, the actor, and the world.

AI and Code, Working Together

Code has always been our language for telling stories. AI adds intuition to that language.

Code builds systems, rules, and logic. AI brings emotion, texture, and variation. Together, they create stories that can think, feel, and react.

Foundry sits at the intersection of those two worlds. It’s not just for generating content. It’s for building experiences that respond to their audience in real time.

Instead of static films or pre-rendered installations, we can now build living media systems that evolve based on who’s in front of them and what they do.

The birthday experiment was small. But the implications are enormous.

What Comes Next

This project taught us something important. Generative AI alone is impressive, but when it meets human input — motion, voice, emotion — it becomes powerful. It becomes personal.

We see endless possibilities ahead:

• Interactive worlds that tailor themselves to each participant.
• Installations that listen, react, and evolve in real time.
• Campaigns where AI doesn’t just tell a story but invites people inside it.
• Educational or entertainment experiences that adapt to every learner or player.

Hot Wheels City was a birthday gift. But it also became the first spark in Forged’s ongoing exploration of generative, responsive storytelling.

This is where storytelling goes next: into a space where AI and code work together to create experiences that don’t just tell stories, but become them.