An interesting THR piece has popped online.
The gist of it is that there are fears that this writers’ strike could push AI into the Hollywood mainstream. Can tech write scripts and enable studios to create more content for less money?
This has been an important year for AI technology, with your friends and neighbours having probably dabbled in and/or used ChatGPT in these recent months. The speed of this advancement has been striking. It turns out that AI has also become a key deal point in the ongoing writers union negotiations.
Interviewed in the article is Amy Webb, founder and CEO of Future Today Institute, she says studio heads are already pondering the idea of AI-generated scripts:
“I’ve had a couple of higher-level people ask, if a strike does happen, how quickly could they spin up an AI system to just write the scripts? And they’re serious.”
According to some of the experts interviewed, AI could potentially get a script 80 percent complete, with the other 20 percent “polished and shaped” by actual writers.
Talent lawyer Leigh Brecheen:
“I absolutely promise you that some people are already working on getting scripts written by AI, and the longer the strike lasts, the more resources will be poured into that effort.”
If anything, the strike could be a good testing ground for greedy studios.
I’m not worried for now, since AI is a replicating tool than an independent creative tool. Then again, ‘Avengers’ filmmakers Joe and Anthony Russo believe AI-generated films are just two years away:
Potentially, what you could do with it is obviously use it to engineer storytelling and change storytelling. So you have a constantly evolving story, either in a game or in a movie, or a TV show."
Sounds like some kind of IP-driven hell. Hope I’m not around for it. How depressing. Scorsese probably wants to club these guys with a baseball bat.
Truthfully, from what I’ve been seeing in a majority of blockbusters these days, including, and especially, those derived from Netflix and Marvel, they might as well be generated from specific “general audience” friendly algorithms. There wouldn’t be much of a difference. If anything, it would be much cheaper, and less of a headache, for the studio heads.
Jeremy Saulnier’s mysterious A24 project, formerly “October,” still has no release date. You’d think, given that it has been in post-production for almost a year now.