One person is now building an entire transmedia science fiction universe with AI tools, a project that would have required a team of writers, artists, and producers just a few years ago. Gerard Bisbal created NUVAGAIA, an ambitious sci-fi world blending solarpunk ideals with cosmic horror, using a combination of Google's AI models including Gemini, Google Veo for video, and other tools to generate everything from podcast scripts and character voices to visual artwork and interactive fiction.

How Is One Creator Managing an Entire Fictional Universe Alone?

The scale of what Bisbal is accomplishing would have been nearly impossible for a solo creator a decade ago. NUVAGAIA spans multiple formats: podcasts that tell the main story, short stories that expand on character backstories and cultural details, a growing wiki that serves as a public archive of the world's canon, visual artwork, videos, and interactive fiction pieces where readers can influence the story's direction. Traditionally, a transmedia project of this scope would require millions of dollars in funding, teams distributed across the globe, and extensive project management infrastructure.

What makes Bisbal's approach newsworthy isn't simply that he's using AI, but rather how deliberately he's directing, editing, and shaping the technology's output into something coherent and intentional. He explained that AI became central to NUVAGAIA because the vision was too large for him to develop alone through traditional means. The technology enables him to explore, prototype, and publish at a scale that would otherwise have been unfeasible.

What Tools Is Bisbal Using to Build This World?

Bisbal uses different AI tools depending on the specific task, selecting each based on how well it serves that particular part of the creative process. For worldbuilding, organization, creative strategy, and coherence review, he relies on ChatGPT because it allows him to work in a structured way and maintain a global view of the entire project. Gemini supports the development of podcast scripts, as it proved to be the best option after testing several alternatives.

For voice generation in the podcast, Bisbal uses Gemini's text-to-speech capabilities within a customized environment in Google Colab, which gives him control over tone, speed, and intention. For images, he primarily uses DALL-E 3 because it produces the hand-drawn finish that matches NUVAGAIA's visual identity. For video retouching, editing, and other visual tasks, he also employs Google Veo, ComfyUI, GPT Image 2, and Nano Banana Pro.

How to Maintain Coherence Across Multiple AI-Generated Formats

• Establish Clear Internal Rules: NUVAGAIA has internal rules, names, civilizations, a chronology, an aesthetic, and its own logic for conflicts. These guidelines determine what belongs in the world and what doesn't, with Bisbal making the final editorial decision on every piece of content.
• Reject Spectacle in Favor of Consistency: If an image is visually spectacular but doesn't feel like NUVAGAIA, or if a text explains too much or contradicts the established tone, Bisbal discards or rewrites it rather than accepting the first AI output as final.
• Build Extensive Internal Documentation: Behind the public-facing content lies a lot of internal material that readers may never see, including character sheets, civilization guides, names, chronology, rules for the world's factions, visual tone references, and relationships between events.
• Assign Each Format a Specific Function: The podcast brings immersion, stories deepen characters and culture, the wiki organizes canon, and images make the world visible. This functional separation helps maintain coherence across different media.

Bisbal stated that coherence doesn't appear simply because you use AI; it appears because you have clear criteria. He emphasized that AI can help expand the world's rules and logic, but it doesn't decide what belongs and what doesn't. That decision remains his.

Why Doesn't AI-Generated Content Feel Repetitive or Soulless?

The key to avoiding generic, repetitive output is refusing to accept the first result as the final answer. Bisbal explained that AI can produce correct things very quickly, but correctness doesn't always equal soul. He works with clear limits for each piece: which civilization is speaking, what tone it has, what conflict lies underneath, and what function that piece serves within the world. Many ideas are discarded entirely, while others are transformed heavily before being published.

In visual work, Bisbal looks for expressive imperfection and coherence rather than pure spectacularity. This approach prevents the polished-but-empty feeling that can plague AI-generated content. The human editorial layer is what transforms AI outputs from technically competent into creatively meaningful.

What Does the Future Hold for NUVAGAIA?

Bisbal is already testing more open, interactive forms of storytelling. The Thresholds series represents interactive pieces where readers decide where the story goes next, and those reader choices become part of the official canon and are incorporated into the wiki. In the long term, NUVAGAIA could expand into tabletop games, card games, video games, or even film and television adaptations.

However, Bisbal emphasized that before reaching those ambitious endpoints, the important foundation is solid: a well-developed world, consistent tone, compelling characters, clear internal rules, and an engaged community. This project demonstrates that AI tools have fundamentally changed what's possible for solo creators, shifting the question from "Can one person build a transmedia universe?" to "How should one person direct AI tools to build something coherent and meaningful?"

Bisbal