Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Mike Redmond | News | March 9, 2026
First things first: Dustin is 100% correct. Ted Season 2 is stubbornly good. Once again, the show is surprisingly delightful from start to finish, and Alanna Ubach continues to be the MVP. It’s comedy comfort food if your idea of comfort food is a d**k joke-telling teddy bear, and mine is. I’m a simple man.
Anyway, despite a veritable sea of offensive topics, Seth MacFarlane is catching the most heat for using AI to turn himself into Bill Clinton, and I’m about to jump into that fire by embedding a clip from Twitter. The internet sure is fun.
Seth MacFarlane says they used AI to make him look like Bill Clinton in 'Ted' S2
— Culture Crave đż (@CultureCrave) March 6, 2026
"It's an interesting example of how AI can be used as a tool … We tried prosthetics, we tried traditional CGI, everything else just looked terrifying"
(via @AP) pic.twitter.com/lbjY50vMcr
According to MacFarlane, “We tried prosthetics, we tried traditional CGI, and everything just looked terrifying. So we just said, ‘To hell with it, let’s try AI.’ It worked. It was the only way to look like Bill Clinton.”
Here’s the thing: He’s right. The whole thing looks shockingly real even though MacFarlane’s mannerisms are fully present. The uncanny valley is still there, but at a very dull roar. Whether that’s because the technology skews more deepfake than AI is out of my depths. But I will say it looks better than the de-aging in the latest Indiana Jones.
Was it worth though? Eh.
Because I bathe in headlines 24/7, I knew the scene was coming, which made it all the more surprising how good it looked. I was fully prepared for AI slop. That said, comedically, it was fine. If someone put a gun to my head and told me to name highlights from Ted Season 2, it wouldn’t even be on the list. There are way funnier gags, and this seems like an awful lot of trouble for a bit that only barely pays off towards the end of the episode.
Sure, we’re all talking about Ted Season 2, but I don’t know if insufferable articles like this one at The A.V. Club are gonna bump those streaming views.
