Recently, an Australian screenwriter received some “notes” – the industry term for constructive criticism – about a script he’d written. Immediately, he sensed something was off: the feedback was unusually generic. He suspected that artificial intelligence had been used, so he confronted the person who gave him the notes. Acclaimed local screenwriter and producer Jacquelin Perske, who has knowledge of this conversation, says that person freely admitted to running the script through an AI program to make their job “more efficient”. As they explained to
the astonished writer: “I look at the response [from AI] and go, ‘Oh yeah, that’s pretty much what I’m feeling’.” Indeed, AI has already muscled its way into Australian TV writing rooms, supplanting entry-level positions once performed by aspiring writers: taking notes in meetings, for instance, or summarising book chapters for a screen adaptation. Some veteran writers fear it’s only a matter of time before major corporations try to “augment” or replace their labour with AI-generated content, too. In the United States and Britain, writers
are fighting back by addressing AI, and the many quandaries it entails, in their TV series. Programs including Hacks, The Comeback, Abbott Elementary, Rooster, Morning Wars, The Capture and Paradise have all explored the potentially sinister consequences of this technology. Some are light-hearted comedies while others are political thrillers, but all make a villain of AI. “Half the stuff I watch on Netflix feels like it’s written by AI because it’s so samey.”Screenwriter Louise Fox In Morning Wars, the character Stella Bak (Greta Lee) is
a media conglomerate CEO who embraces AI to stay ahead of her rivals, only for her lookalike chatbot to go rogue and destroy her reputation during a critical presentation. In Hacks, superstar comedian Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) is tempted by a lucrative offer from a tech bro, who wants to use her material and voice to train his AI program – until she realises there’s no need “to optimise the creative process … that’s one of the things we’ve figured out; we’re good there”. And
the final season of The Comeback – starring Lisa Kudrow as Valerie Cherish, an actress in the first AI-written sitcom – is devoted to the existential threat this technology poses to large swathes of Hollywood.
AI, screenwriting, Australian TV, Jacquelin Perske, Louise Fox, Morning Wars, Hacks, The Comeback, writers strike, creative process
So the notes were “generic” like a robot wrote them? Shocking.
I mean I’ve seen reviewers use ChatGPT to “summarize” stuff and it always sounds the same. But aren’t notes supposed to be kind of vague anyway? Like feedback is always “make it better” lol.
Wait but couldn’t the person just be lazy and not necessarily AI? Generic feedback is a normal Hollywood thing. Also, if AI is taking jobs, shouldn’t the writer have used AI too so they could compete? Feels like everyone’s acting surprised when they literally asked for notes.
This is exactly why everything on Netflix feels the same now. Half the “comedy” sounds like it was generated in a lab. If companies start “augmenting” writers I can’t even imagine how bad the characters will get, like no real voice. And then people will say it’s “efficient” and we’ll just accept it, ugh.