There is increasing sophistication and advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI) driven chatbots such as ChatGPT or Bing, which is already raising question about its ability of writing a film screenplay or making a film.
Recently, Writers Guild of America proposed that ChatGPT would absolutely be allowed to write scripts for films in the future, provided that the credit and money goes to the human writer who came up with the prompts in the first place.
The proposal paints a scary picture of the future; a future in which even the most human of arts are crushed under the wheels of an unthinking technology. Or does it? Everyone knows that ChatGPT has its flaws.
For example, when a journalist from The Guardian asked it to write his biography, and the resulting errors included birthday, job, the number of social media followers he has and the number of awards he has won, plus it claimed he once wrote a book called The Guardian Book of Idiots Abroad. So, it’s still quite useless.
When the journalist as the first prompt tried asking the ChatGPT to write him the outline for a movie that would make billions of dollars theatrically, in return ChatGPT instantly came up with a science fiction action blockbuster called The Last Hope. The first paragraph of the outline reads: “In the near future, Earth is facing a catastrophic event caused by a series of natural disasters that have devastated the planet. The world’s governments have been unable to find a solution to the crisis, and the survival of humanity is now in jeopardy. A team of scientists and engineers come together to develop a last-ditch effort to save the planet. They build a spacecraft, the Last Hope, that will travel through a wormhole to a distant planet that has been identified as potentially habitable”.
So, it’s Interstellar, basically. But better, hopefully, since that film only made US$600m globally and The Guardian journalist wanted to make billions. And this is where ChatGPT actually comes in useful. The outline it provided stated: “As they near their destination, the team discovers a dark secret that threatens not only their mission but the fate of humanity itself.” But that’s too vague, so I asked a follow-up question, wanting it to explain this dark secret. And it did:
“The distant planet, which was believed to be a potential new home for humanity, is already inhabited by an intelligent alien race. The aliens have been monitoring the Last Hope’s journey and are hostile towards the human crew. The crew discovers that the aliens are far more advanced than they expected and have the power to destroy Earth. As the crew tries to negotiate with the aliens and find a way to peacefully coexist, they uncover a deeper conspiracy that reveals that the aliens had a hand in causing the natural disasters that have been devastating Earth. This revelation sets off a race against time as the crew must not only find a way to survive the aliens’ attacks but also stop them from destroying Earth and prevent the same disaster from happening to another planet”.
This is instantly more interesting, and points to a future where programs like ChatGPT don’t actually write movies, but generate plot ideas that could help human screenwriters out of trouble. However, there are still limitations. Buoyed by the possibility of its suggestions, he asked for casting suggestions, and it offered Chris Hemsworth, Brie Larson and John Boyega.
Larson, it said, would play a doctor called Rachel Patel, so he asked it for some sample dialogue. It gave him a short scene in which Hemsworth visits Larson and tells her that he thinks he’s sprained his arm. Her response is:
“Let me see. You’re right, it’s sprained. I’ll wrap it up for you”. With lines as dull as this, his dreams of becoming a billionaire faded away to nothing. Time to switch things up.
But this won’t be wise to make any decision so quick as Artificial Intelligence, as I have said, is in very primary stage and possibly within next 5-6 years, it will gain tremendous capacities of meeting various requirements of users, including film screenplay writing, plot idea and beyond.
