The strike by the Writers Guild of America (WGA) isn’t simply about securing better fees for screenwriters. It touches on something much bigger: making sure that screenwriting will continue to exist as a profession. Recently, at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, a number of executives sang the praises of AI programs such as ChatGPT. “In the next three years, you’re going to see a movie that was written by AI made … a good one,” said film producer Todd Lieberman. Fox Entertainment CEO Rob Wade added: “Not just scripts. Editing, all of it … storyboarding a movie, anything … AI in the future, maybe not next year or the year after, but if we’re talking 10 years? AI is going to be able to do absolutely all of these things.”
Television written by AI is a terrifying prospect. Civilisation was built by humans telling stories. We’ve been doing it for tens of thousands of years, so the prospect of giving all of that up and relying on the equivalent of a random number generator to save executives a few pennies is horrifying. Still, there is at least some good news: for now, AI absolutely sucks when it comes to screenwriting.
To test the capability of AI’s current powers, I ask ChatGPT to mimic some of the biggest television moments of recent years – and it doesn’t fare well.
First I ask it to replicate what might go down as the standout TV sequence of the year: the death of Logan Roy on Succession. On the show, the death plays out in a fog of deep uncertainty, as the Roy children struggle to understand what has happened. I try to get ChatGPT to replicate the scene with the prompt: “Write a scene from a television drama. A man has died on board a private aircraft. His three children are told about this via a phone call from the estranged husband of one of the children.” What comes out can best be described as Bad Succession:
SHIV (on phone, hesitant): Hello, Tom?
TOM (gently): Shiv, it’s Tom. I have some devastating news. Your father … he’s gone.
Roman’s eyes widen with shock as he clutches his chest. Kendall and Shiv share a look of disbelief.
KENDALL (angry): What do you mean, he’s gone? Is he missing?
ROMAN (desperate): No, Kendall, he means … Dad is dead.
Kendall slams his fist against the wall, the sound reverberating through the room.
KENDALL (broken): We need to see it for ourselves.
ROMAN (nodding): You’re right, Kendall. We can’t just sit here.
Roman takes a deep breath, summoning his strength.
ROMAN (resolute): Let’s go. We need to be there for each other now more than ever.
They rise together, a united front in the face of tragedy, ready to confront the painful reality that awaits them.
I have a similar response when I ask ChatGPT to recreate my favourite TV scene of the past 12 months, the showdown in Better Call Saul where Kim leaves Jimmy because she realises that they bring out the worst in each other. On TV, this leads to the devastating line: “I love you, but so what?” The best ChatGPT manages is this blunt exchange:
JIMMY: “I know that I love you, Kim. And I know that you love me. We just need to figure out how to move past this.”
KIM (squeezing his hand): “I love you, too, Jimmy. But I don’t know if I can ever forgive myself for what we did.”
“Are we all going to be watching completely AI written films and TV in the next few years?” says Joe Barton, writer of shows such as Giri/Haji and The Lazarus Project. “I guess it’s possible, but I don’t think it’s going to go that far. Whether it’s subconscious or not, I think audiences are drawn to humanity and fallibility in the things they consume. I think they want authenticity.”
When the AI is set to work on creating comedy, the results are worse by leagues. Prompted to recreate the masterful Coffin Flop sketch from I Think You Should Leave – in which a spokesperson embarks on an increasingly deranged rant about the cancellation of a show where naked bodies fall out of coffins at funerals – it comes up with this mess:
“I implore you, the fans of our channel. Rise up! Stand with us in this fight. Write to your local lawmakers, your MPs, your congressmen, your senators, your dogs. Let them know that you won’t stand for this injustice. That you demand the right to watch naked people falling out of coffins, just like we demand the right to show it!”
Which, you have to admit, is not up to the original: “They’re saying we don’t have permissions of the family. I said we don’t need permissions of the family. We’re allowed to show ’em nude ’cause they ain’t got no soul.”
Worse happens when I feed in the premise of Jack Rooke’s Big Boys, the Bafta-nominated sitcom about a young gay man and his straight best friend. On screen, Big Boys conveys more touching subtleties about modern masculinity than almost anything else on TV. Meanwhile, ChatGPT throws up this aggressively two-dimensional alternative:
DANNY: (pouting) Ugh, I can’t concentrate with all of your Grindr notifications going off every five seconds.
JACK: (smiling) Sorry, I can’t help it if I’m popular.
DANNY: (grinning) Yeah, but you could at least turn the volume down.
Suddenly, Jack’s phone rings, and he eagerly picks it up.
JACK: (on phone) Hello? Oh, hey, Mark. Yeah, I’m free tonight. (smirks at Danny) Looks like I’m getting lucky again.
DANNY: (rolling his eyes) Great, another one-night stand.
I send this new Big Boys scene to Rooke, to see if he would be scared of AI taking his job. Within minutes he responds: “AI doesn’t have a dead dad it can exploit for an emotionally satisfying televisual narrative! AI can’t drink poppers aged 19!” So, not concerned? “I’m more concerned with telly execs not paying me fairly and competitively,” he replies.
I try once more to get ChatGPT to write a funny scene, but its suggestion for a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode in which Jeff Garlin becomes sexually aroused by a golden retriever who can type (JEFF: “She’s smoking hot!” LARRY: “Jeff, that’s a dog!”) is so far off the mark I decided to give up.
I try a new tactic. Forget writing: how would ChatGPT improve the Game of Thrones finale? And here the machine does well, coming up with a comprehensive five-point plan. “Daenerys’s character arc in the final season was controversial, with many fans feeling that her descent into madness was rushed and not fully developed,” it says. “To improve this, the writers could have explored her growing isolation and paranoia, as well as the psychological toll of her losses and failures. This could have been done through additional scenes or dialogue that showed her mental state deteriorating over time.”
So perhaps this is the future of AI. As a writer, it is still wildly hack-ish. But as a supplement to human writers – helping out with grunt work, questioning flaws – there is a chance that it might come in useful. That is something Barton can imagine, too. “I don’t think that audiences are ever going to prefer being told a story by a machine over a person,” he says. “Where I do think AI is going to come in useful is execs using it to develop ideas or come up with solutions to structure and plot. In fact, I’d be surprised if they’re not already. AI is going to change the industry, but the degree to which it damages it or not is down to how we react now.”
