Like with all new tech improvements, AI guarantees the world. We’re instructed AI will change filmmaking, bringing a brand new set of instruments that may assist creators iterate higher and work quicker. Placing hypothesis fueled by huge enterprise capital {dollars} apart, one query many are asking is what can AI truly do now?
That’s a query author/director Scott Z. Burns got down to reply when he used giant language fashions (LLMs) applications, like ChatGPT, to assist with a script for the sequel to his and Steven Soderbergh’s “Contagion.” It’s a six-month journey he documented within the eight-part Audible podcast collection “What Might Go Mistaken?,” and Burns mentioned his findings on this week’s episode of the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast.
Whereas Burns explored the complexities of the problems surrounding AI, and took a nuanced method to determining what it may and couldn’t do for screenwriters, he walked away from the expertise with one huge concern.
“That is actually a client product, and you must perceive that you just’re being offered, and that’s why they’re promising us the world,” stated Burns.
As Burns paperwork in “What Might Go Mistaken,” there are a variety of occasions totally different AI fashions prioritized conserving him completely happy and engaged, over being knowledgeable instrument.
“This occurs a lot of occasions within the podcast, the place the AIs which might be put in entrance of me flirt lots, they usually flatter you a large number. And you then immediately go, ‘Oh wait, now I get it. The extra engagement they get out of me, then that’s good for his or her numbers and that’s good for his or her constituency, and that may assist them sometime with advert income,” stated Burns, including the the illusory expertise of the AI attending to know him, and attempting to assume like him, was a blended bag expertise. “It’s actually simply type of mirroring again to you, and once more, it’s vital to all the time bear in mind it is a client product, and it’s constructed to govern you.”
This is the reason Burns thinks it’s revealing that the largest “Contagion” AI breakthroughs got here from “Lexter,” which he prompted to be a tough-minded, sharp tongued film critic, fairly than a screenwriting companion.
“Fairly than making it a mirror of me, [Lexter] was nearly adversarial,” stated Burns.
As Burns beforehand detailed to IndieWire, there are particular and restricted methods he has discovered AI to be a helpful screenwriting instrument, most of which heart round iterating on an concept or premise.
“AI is helpful in that regard, you probably have an concept and also you’re attempting to go, ‘Okay, so what will we do now with this concept? What are, what are the permutations? What are the attainable issues?’ It’s actually good at making lists. It’ll offer you a listing of 10 issues,” stated Burns.
Burns stated these lists, at occasions, could possibly be useful in accelerating the considering course of a author naturally goes via, however that was not the case with arising with the precise authentic concepts to iterate off. At one level through the podcast, Burns is confirmed learn how to create an AI writers room so he can blue sky an concept with a group of various LLMs, every prompted to method the venture as a author with a selected background, life expertise, and experience — as if to reflect the range of views a showrunner may purpose to create when placing collectively a room. Burns wasn’t impressed by the outcomes.
“I really feel like even reassembling the constituent elements of 4 or 5 AI writers simply meant you had been making a distinct by-product type of piece,” stated Burns, who known as the outcomes “fairly anodyne by-product concepts.”
And it’s right here that the author/director warned his Hollywood colleagues to not ignore the problems surrounding AI, and never cede floor that AI is incapable of arising with authentic concepts behind earlier studio successes.
“I feel the massive menace right here is that we’re so timid round [AI], and so reluctant to roll up our sleeves and go, ‘What does this factor do? How will we use it? What’s it good for?’ That we permit the streamers to as a substitute use it and hint the outlines of films which might be going to be actually by-product, after which give them to our brokers and say, ‘You bought anyone who can write this?,’” stated Burns. “That to me is the tip of Hollywood, and we have to shield ourselves towards that. On the very least, we have to begin saying, ‘Hey, when you’re utilizing an AI on this course of, you’ve received to let the patron know.”
To listen to Scott Z. Burns’ full interview, subscribe to the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast on Apple, Spotify, or your favourite podcast platform.