ChatGPT can do a lot, but can the AI also write scripts? “Black Mirror” creator Charlie Brooker asked himself this question and had the chatbot write the screenplay for an episode of the new sixth season – with a clear result.
Since the release of ChatGPT 2022, the chatbot has engaged many industries. In addition to the opportunities that such an AI offers, the question arises to what extent ChatGPT can actually replace people, especially in the creative sector. Because it is actually the task of the chatbot to generate texts based on existing information. This has now led to an interesting experiment with the Netflix series Black Mirror. The idea was that ChatGPT should write the script for an episode of the series. The whole thing can be dismissed as a funny anecdote, but it also has a political dimension.
ChatGPT should write an episode for Black Mirror
It sounds almost absurd, but it actually happened that way. Charlie Brooker, creator and showrunner of the hit dystopian series “Black Mirror”, has had ChatGPT write an episode for the new sixth season. In conversation with the British magazine “EmpireThe Brit said that he had “played around with ChatGPT a bit”. “Black Mirror” is certainly not the worst series for such attempts. After all, it’s about dystopian future scenarios that often have something to do with technology. Previous topics have included the effects of social networks, human-like robots and video game addiction.
Having scripts for such a series written by ChatGPT could also be a brilliant move and marketing ploy. However, Brooker made it clear in the interview that the experiment had backfired properly: “Something came out that reads plausible at first glance, but at second glance it sucks.” The problem was that the AI only created something based on the already existing episodes, but not something of my own.
Also Read: This Is What the Children of Popular Celebrity Couples Would Look Like
The debate about AI and (film) books
However, ChatGPT pointed out to Brooker that he would often use the same templates for episodes. “I realized I’d written a lot of episodes where someone would say, ‘Oh, I was in a computer the whole time!'” Brooker told Empire. ChatGPT can also be of help when writing screenplays.
Above all, of course, there is the question of whether ChatGPT and other AI solutions will eventually be supplied with enough data to derive new creative concepts from them. For example, a children’s book entitled “Mia, Finn and the robot Ki” has already been published and was written by KI. There were certain specifications for the bot and ultimately some things were changed and supplemented by the team of authors. However, large parts of what was written could be adopted.
Also Read: Artist Uses AI to Show What Dead Celebrities Might Look Like Today
How creative can AI be?
The mentioned children’s book also contains a commentary by Professor Robert Katzschmann, an expert in robotics. Among other things, he is of the opinion that AI can support human creativity in the future, but cannot replace it. So you can use ChatGPT and Co. for a basic structure, but the design should continue to be done by people. Above all, the most important reason for this is the quality of the facts. An AI can only reproduce the information you feed it. “In the future we will have to design our education to ask the right questions and generate really new ideas. ChatGPT can then formulate these questions and ideas,” writes Katzschmann in his comment.
A current preprint study came to a similar conclusion. Researchers at Humboldt University in Berlin, in collaboration with the University of Essex, have subjected several AI bots to a creativity test. It turned out that the six tested AI programs performed as well as the human test subjects in terms of everyday creativity. However, a certain percentage of these individuals performed better than any of the programs tested across the board.
An AI still needs the human impetus from outside, according to Antonio Krüger, Director of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence daily News. AI programs could certainly find creative solutions to everyday problems. But Krüger also says: “What they cannot do, however, is to enter completely abstract new territory, because the architecture of the programs is not suitable for this.”
Strike in Hollywood also has to do with AI
The debate about AI and screenplays is also so topical and explosive because the screenwriters in Hollywood are still strike for better working conditions. Various members of the WGA (Writers Guild of America) have been resting their work since the beginning of May 2023; it is about, among other things, the payment of several thousand authors. In the industrial action, the WGA is on one side and the big studios on the other.
The main reason is the changed conditions due to the great popularity of streaming services. As a result, more films, but above all series, are being produced. At the same time, seasons are shorter and writing teams are smaller than they used to be, limiting long-term compensation and security for writers. In addition, the WGA members are not involved in the other rights should a series later run on other streaming platforms or on TV.
Another major criticism of the WGA relates to AI technology. The strikers are demanding that the use of AI in the film business should be clearly regulated. Alternatively, there was also the suggestion that to deviate from this requirement, if the use of such AI would not affect the payment of screenwriters. So far all negotiations have failed. The fact that chatbots like ChatGPT are far from ready to write entire screenplays should be good news for the authors. Of course, that doesn’t solve the situation.