If there’s one thing Hollywood screenwriters know how to deliver, it’s a snappy one-liner.
“Pay your writers, or we’ll spoil Succession,” read one of the placards paraded outside movie studios in Los Angeles this week, as thousands of film and television writers went on strike. “Pencils down, middle fingers up,” said another. Closer to the bone, however, was a placard reading: “Wrote ChatGPT This.” For the plot twist is that this strike isn’t just over money. The Writers Guild of America also wants to establish some ground rules preventing studios from using artificial intelligence to generate scripts in ways that cut humans out of their own creative process.
The union has been understandably spooked by the rapid progress of ChatGPT-4, the chatbot capable of generating uncannily convincing knock-offs of any written genre, from rap lyrics to Jane Austen.
Buggy whip makers standing astride the march of technology shouting stop.
Either ChatGPT will work, in which case it will be used. Or it won’t and it won’t. Union protestations will do fuck all to change that.
The Greg Gutfeld show, which regularly beats the leftist competition, was not affected as the writers refuse to work with Fox.
Yet another case of:-
For they’d none of ’em be missed — they’d none of ’em be missed!
The problem with most TV writing is how many people have nothing but writing in their past.
Like Dashiell Hammett, who wrote The Maltese Falcon, had been a detective and a soldier. A lot of his characters were based on real people he met. Most TV writers don’t have that. They’re upper middle class, left school and went to arts college and then into writing. The people they meet are other middle class people who write, and who are therefore fairly boring, so the only drama they have comes from other movies.
If that’s all you have, you are prone to ChatGPT replacing you. You’re just regurgitating other work, which is what ChatGPT is very good at.
You have a good point BoM4.
If AI really can do this job as well or better, it will be interesting to see if/how long the unions keep it off the pitch. In many cases they’ve succeeded in forcing people to pay for unnecessary work or workers for decades.
Jeremy Vile the other day had a segment regarding Al Beebs change to the end of ‘Great Expectations’*.
One panelist was all for it but the other said “Why not write something new rather than
fuck up‘update’ a classic”?Spot on.
If really you want to see how to take a classic story and ‘update it’ (and in doing so create another classic) watch ‘Forbidden Planet’.
*Regarding endings, I was sincerely disappointed back in the 80’s to read the book ‘Midnight Express’ after seeing the film first……
Just a thought. CHATGPT gets it’s database from harvesting material from the web, doesn’t it? Should the use of the ware become common, it going to get a bit recursive, isn’t it? The ware will be harvesting from its own material.
On the other hand I suspect that’s pretty well the form with the meatware. The difference may be undetectable.
@BoM4
The problem with most TV writing is how many people have nothing but writing in their past.
Like Dashiell Hammett, who wrote The Maltese Falcon, had been a detective and a soldier. A lot of his characters were based on real people he met. Most TV writers don’t have that.
I dunno about the past of most TV writers (I suspect you’re right) but while it might be helpful it’s not necessary to have done X to write about X in fiction.
It’s necessary to have a good imagination, some decent research skills, and a bit of confidence and flair, and most importantly, the ability to begin a book (or script) and finish it.
CS Lewis had no experience of magical wardrobes, talking fauns and immortal noble lions, for example.
Obviously if you’re writing fiction which at least nods at reality it’s a bit different, but Elmore Leonard was never a gangster or cop, and Larry McMurtry wasn’t a cowboy.
I speak as one who has written a few novels, which have sold very well (and gained thousands of very good reviews on Amazon and goodreads), two of which have been picked up by Universal Studios and are currently in development.
(The banking crisis and our fascist NWO will probably fuck things up for me if ChatGPT doesn’t, but still.)
One of the two for which I’ve just sold the rights is a tale of derring-do based in Somalia.
I’ve never done this particular sort of derring-do, and I’ve never been to Somalia. Exponents of the derring-do and people with a lot of experience of Somalia both tell me it’s bang on (within the inevitable confines of the written word, and fiction).
It is quite hard to work out what’s going to happen with this stuff. It appears to be true – and if it isn’t it probably soon will be – that computers can create proper stories and write realistic dialogue etc. Will people want to read them if they know they’re written by code? Dunno.
BIS,
This is exactly my point. Writers have always taken a lot from previous writing. Like Tolkein wasn’t the first person to write about dwarves, elves and trolls, but he added his meatware experiences in WW1, some Christian stuff too. When I look at the films of JJ Abrams, there’s no meatware. It’s all derived from other movies. His Star Wars movies are just other Star Wars movies, Super 8 just feels like one of those 80s films like ET and The Goonies.
Off topic – Voter ID laws. And of course Spud is outraged. OUTRAGED AND ANGRY! It’s fascism and an assault on freedom.
My comment that every EU country has voter ID laws and they’ve had voter ID laws in Northern Ireland since 2002 remains unposted.
The never-ending spate of Disney live action “modern values” remakes of their own classic cartoons (which by comparison were generally faithful and respectful of the original stories) would probably have been considerably less cringe-inducing if they had been written by AI. Ditto pretty much anything that comes out of the MCU and the Star Wars franchise.
And as for Rings of Power…………
Interested,
“CS Lewis had no experience of magical wardrobes, talking fauns and immortal noble lions, for example.
Obviously if you’re writing fiction which at least nods at reality it’s a bit different, but Elmore Leonard was never a gangster or cop, and Larry McMurtry wasn’t a cowboy.”
I’m not saying that you have to be a cowboy to write about cowboys. I’m saying more that you would make a different sort of cowboy story, or your cowboy might be a different character. Like Michael Bay and Martin Scorsese have both made films about ambulance drivers, but the Scorsese film is about guilt and the search for redemption, which is what you get from someone who spent years training to be a catholic priest.
@BoM4
Oh Star Wars is incredibly derivative. Action war movie meets western. It’s certainly nothing whatever to do with SciFi apart from all the other “SciFi” films are nothing to do with SciFi.
But derivative is what sells it. As what sells Dungeons & Dragons flicks.
Won’t name drop but there’s something I learned from conversations with a well known TV comedy writer. People want familiarity. He just re-wrote old gags. Why he was successful. He wanted the audience to see the kicker lines coming before they arrived so they’d already be laughing when they were delivered. Same with Star Wars. You can pretty well predict the screenplay from the first 10 minutes. Including the twists. You’ve seen the same in so many other films. People feel comfortable with that. They don’t really want to be challenged.
biS @ 12.05.
Hence the popularity of Q. Tarantino.
If you want to watch a dozen or so movies in the space of 90 minutes, pick one of his films.
His Star Wars movies are just other Star Wars movies, Super 8 just feels like one of those 80s films like ET and The Goonies.
I thought he nailed it with Super 8, but missed the mark a bit with the Star Trek reboot and just totally didn’t get Star Wars at all. To be fair there was a lot of studio interference with the latter, with committees of woke twats involved.
Oh Star Wars is incredibly derivative.
It was conceived as a homage to the old serials such as Flash Gordon. After it’s completely unexpected level of success, George Lucas spent decades peddling the lie that he’d designed it to be this huge, sweeping masterpiece of film-making. Given the quality of just about everything that came after the original trilogy (and the second installment was less than stellar), you can see just how full of shit he was…
The best Star Wars movies are the Family Guy trilogy
Blue Harvest;
something, something, something, Dark Side; and
It’s a Trap!
Just as the best Star Trek film is
Galaxy Quest.
“harvesting from its own material”
Not entirely. The “harvesting” builds a model of how ideas and concepts relate, but it can create new things out of that, much as you can get new songs from “harvesting” knowledge about music theory.
In software development, there’s an eventual risk I suppose we’re all out of a job, but for now we are finding ChatGPT increases productivity. It can’t write whole software projects, for small things it’s quicker to just do it yourself, but for things in the middle it is very quick at getting started: it will choose which tools will solve your problem and help with the boilerplate stuff of using new libraries, tailored to your specific problem unlike tutorials on the web. Even when it can take on bigger projects, there’s still going to be skill needed to prompt it to do the right things.
It’s surely the same for writers. I’ve played with it for generating fiction. It can do plot outlines, suggest ideas, flesh out sections, write individual scenes or bits of dialogue. It can re-write things in a different style, expand things or make them more concise. Right now it’s a productivity tool writers should take advantage of.
If you want to watch a dozen or so movies in the space of 90 minutes, pick one of his films.
Dunno, it’s more like the dozen movies are other Tarantino movies. His basic shtick is to take aspects of history and culture and have a ridiculous violent wank over them. Like the man himself, they’re intelligent and witty but rather nasty and lacking in charm.
Shorter and lower quality, but earlier and better:
A Fistful of Travellers’ Cheques
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKsNR7F86FM
Given the ever increasing outlets for film and TV shows these days, it appears to be something of a scramble to fill them with content. Much of it is pretty bad, much mediocre, some is ok and some is quite good. It seems there ought to be a way to fit AI into that, though likely each script will be read and a word or two changed before being green-lighted, and who ever does the tweaking will get the credit if not the pay.
Back to Tim’s original observation: I bet the last writer of one-liners will write the best goddam one-liners ever. Amen.
Slightly derivative? Well then, make me a screenwriter.
I think the best Western I’ve seen is Zulu.
If someone asked AI to write a Western but set it in the Zulu Wars would you get as good a film?
Dunno. Anyone want to try it?
Hence the popularity of Q. Tarantino.
Watched as much of Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown as I could stand. Never made through any of them. His movies flatter the unintelligent by making them think they’re clever for spotting obvious mass culture references. And as far as Tarantino’s sexualized love of violence… Well, let’s just say if he was found in bed with two dead hookers tomorrow, I wouldn’t be surprised.
PJF,
“Dunno, it’s more like the dozen movies are other Tarantino movies. His basic shtick is to take aspects of history and culture and have a ridiculous violent wank over them. Like the man himself, they’re intelligent and witty but rather nasty and lacking in charm.”
The thing to me is that taking some pop culture references, remixing them, and being ironic about it all was a novel trick. He then did it bigger with Pulp Fiction, so, OK. But then, he just kept on doing it. The problem is that tricks get boring. And there isn’t a lot else there. It’s all cool surface and emotional detachment.
There was a discussion on the Betfair forum today, asking what had happened to a tipster called Nick Mordin. Someone posed the question to Chat gpt, and received the answer:
“Mordin was the author of several influential books on horse racing, including “Winning Without Thinking: A Guide to Horse Race Betting Systems,” “Betting for a Living: Nick Mordin’s Winning Strategies,” and “The Winning Look at Big Race Horses.” These books are still considered essential reading for serious horse racing enthusiasts.
Mordin passed away in 2012 at the age of 56, but his contributions to the field of horse racing analysis and betting continue to be remembered and respected by racing fans and professionals alike.”
This would have been news to Mordin: you can actually find topical articles by him online dated 2013 and 2014. (I believe he’s living somewhere outside of New York at the moment, as it happens.)
But this will be your future: your pension’s been cancelled because it’s now being run by AI, and AI says you’re dead. And the person whose job it used to be to correct these things has been replaced by AI.
When the BBC broadcasts a repeat of the Eric Morecambe / Andre Previn joke, AI will correct it so Eric plays the notes in the right order.
It’s a cross between an encyclopaedia of conventional wisdom and a rhyming dictionary.
Mind you, that would be an improvement on the BBC fact checkers.
O/T I looked up the average wage for a “fact checker”. About $13 an hour. Cocktail waitresses earn a lot more than that. They must be super brainy.
A story I heard tonight. Someone asked ChatGPT about Bard, and it replied “Bard is a search engine that responds in rhyme”…
There must be countless examples of a particular job disappearing because new technology has made it obsolete. Either because the job is now done by a machine, or because the product being made has been superceded by something better. The one that sticks in my mind was when type setters were replaced by word processors. The fact that those in the print union was such a nasty and belligerent bunch made that one quite memorable.
PJF @ 1.50
R.I.P. the genius that was Rik Mayall.
Long live E.E. Hitler.