So the Writers Guild of America is on strike, and one of the main sticking points is the use of AI for writing. If a strike took place a year ago, this would not be a factor or an issue, but advances in #AI has made it a pressing concern. Understandably so.
After using several AI tools over the past year, I recently watched a video on YouTube that showcased the channel owner WDWPro using ChatGPT to create a complete episode of Seinfeld. It was… Not bad.
So, I decided to give it a try. I used ChatGPT to create the pre-title sequence and first act of an episode of Star Trek and it took… about 8 minutes. And it FELT like the original series. Characters were consistent, and it even had Scotty’s tone of voice right.
The cool part was how I could have the AI rewrite the scene instantly, and ask it to add elements and change things. My episode is focused on Uhura, one of the great underused characters of the original series, and I wanted to see if I could make an interesting story for her to be the hero in. So far, so good.
Hollywood Execs are already looking at this, and police procedurals like Law and Order are obvious candidates for such tech. Will my episode of Trek, when I am done, be any good? Maybe, if I give it a “polish pass” after the full script is created. As it is, it’s… Not bad, and definitely FEELS like an episode of Star Trek. I’ll post the transcript and the revised script when I am done.
The most interesting thing is… How do Hollywood execs give writers feedback? Notes. How do you tell ChatGPT what you want to see in your story? NOTES.
I believe many Execs will LOVE AI. No writer to push back, hire journeyman directors to just shoot the thing, and you are saving tons of money on anything you produce.
“May you live in interesting times.”
More to come.
UPDATE: Here is a link to the finished, polished script. It ended up taking a couple of hours on a polish pass, and though it is short (a TOS script was 54 pages, my script is 51) it is quite serviceable.
I could easily pad it with more scenes about the aliens, or another conference room scene. For reference, here is a word document with most of the back and forth I had with ChatGPT.
Total time expended: six hours (and two of those was to format the script properly in Word!).
And here is the video that inspired all this: