Amazon’s Ambitious Mothership Is Real! Nah, Just Kidding. It Is Fake. Phew!

For a moment, it appears that Amazon may have make good on its patent filed in 2014 for an autonomous airborne fulfillment center. Airborne Fulfillment Center or AFC is basically a giant warehouse in the sky that dispatches delivery drones from as high as 45,000 feet. It was a concept that is bold and yet feels dystopia and futuristic at the same time.

Sorry, but we can’t help but to relate it to the live action movie of Aeon Flux (2005, Paramount Pictures) where it also had a slow cruising blimp circling the city. Though, that one did not actually dispatch any drone. But you get the idea why it feels both dystopia and futuristic. Anyways… recently, a viral video of an Amazon blimp deploying delivery drones seem to lead many to believe Amazon has somehow secretly realized the patent.

The video shows a giant-ass blimp that resembles the P 791 Hybrid Aircraft by Lockheed Martin cruising in the air as numerous drones were dispatched from its belly. The video had the Internet losing it with some seemingly delighted by the prospect while others, well, not so much. Some even go as far as to describe it as “borderline dystopian” and “what the last human alive will see.” Well, it might very well be, except that this isn’t real.

The viral video posted on Twitter by Hiroshima-based video production artist, Twitter user zozi009, was a clever render which zozi009 detailed in a subsequent tweet. So I guess it is a good news? Previously, when we detailed the patent in 2017, it was more like “woah, that’s very futuristic” and it never occur to us it will feel this dystopia-ish until we saw this fake video.

Yes, the video may be fake, but the image of a giant blimp lingering above city, continuously dropping drones out into the sky feels rather terrifying for some reason.

Images: Twitter (@zozi009).

Animated GIF and Source: Gizmodo.