Can AI Replace Hollywood Writers?

Well Hollywood people are striking, they want “money”.

This got me thinking, what if we just stopped paying people to do work, and replaced them, with robots? AI!

That sounds like a good idea, right?

Like, first we replace the Hollywood people, then we go for, I don’t know, McDonalds workers, then Menards employees, and then just everybody else.

I mean it sounds like a win win to me.

Nobody has to work, and the robots will actually get my Big Mac order right. I said no lettuce!

[knowledgehusk]

many people don't seem to be certain about whether this video's "spicy takes" are ironic, sarcastic, or genuine.

well, here's my actual opinion on the issue;



I agree with you

[alasiadartheactual]

In the words of my greatest creative writing professor: “all writing is derivative and iterative. But everyone is unique and adds the spice.
Every work is derivative. All work is inspired by something else. Every work is iterative. All the work is based on multiple attempts. But your experience adds the special spice. Your weirdness makes it’s special.
And never forget that market based work for the masses pleases no one.

[joekat]

I'm not too plugged into online discourse (thank god) but my understanding is that residuals are extra scary for studios since they'd have to release real numbers about how their streaming services are doing

[TheDolphinTuna]

Reminds me of the Calvin and Hobbes strip where Calvin is trying to persuade his father to buy a computer and how it would help him with his homework. His father replies: “You know you have to tell the computer what to say, right?”, and Calvin walks off muttering: “I don’t understand the big fuss about computers?”

[cartilagehead]

If the existing writers are the fundamental cause of bad media then you would think that Hollywood would’ve taken the trivially easy step of replacing them with different people, or pursuing some of the million unproduced scripts that are floating around LA or get sent to studios every week. Blaming the writers for the production and release of bad content is like blaming the lithium miners because your phone has a faulty battery.

[normak]

I'd be interested to know in an AI could replace a CEO, more money goes into movie CEO's than the writers and are arguably more replaceable

[Dahras]

I think we've become so accustomed to technology being invented and then improving exponentially over time that we've forgotten that that isn't a given, it's a feature of our specific technological moment.

Personally, as someone who has taken multiple college courses on machine-learning and has tried out the tool extensively, I do not believe that it is suited for the kind of task that creative writing is. And I don't think that more improvements to the tech will change that. Chat GPT does not "think". It uses a black box algorithm to condense every piece of text filtered into it into something that a person would, at-a-glance, say could be written by a person in response to your prompt. This immediately falls apart when it is asked to produce a longer piece of text with motivating ideas and forethought, because, again, the AI does not think.

So how would you even get Chat GPT to be a "writer"? By you, the human being a good writer and knowing what to look for and cherry pick from it's output. And at that point, the question has to be asked, why not just write the damn thing yourself.

[MrNotSpecified]

Maybe eventually, but right now, no. GPT will output the most generic things possible because it's trained to do so, to output the word most likely to follow the preceding context. If they want to produce more generic garbage then yes. And I mean, if they fire literally all writers, just imagine how horrendous the scripts the marketing people would come up with. You need to coax AI to give you the answer you're looking for. You need to know what questions to ask, what input to give it, to get good output. Garbage in, garbage out would be the case with corporates who have no soul.

[CanaldoZenny]

My computer class teacher from the early 2000's once said "the computer is the dumbest technology ever, because it can't do anything by itself". He was talking about input devices, how a PC can't output anything without a human user directly inputting the commands into it.

The same logic applies to AI tools. ChatGPT cannot give you a nice movie script without you knowing exactly what prompts to use. Midjourney cannot give you artistic masterpieces without inputting all the right prompts. And who knows what to input? Real writer and artists with real life experience. They know what to type to get exactly what they want. Otherwise tools like ChatGPT and Bing AI are just glorified chatbots that summarize information.

[Dlstufguy]

I wonder where the issue with modern movies etc comes from. Is it that the writers are bad or is it the corporate culture over riding what they write. We have seen this happen to the automotive industry, music, movies, tv, consumer goods, shopping, etc. And most recently notable, video games. When the suits are involved its about extracting wealth. We end up with trend chasing, same things over and over again. All more expensive with bigger numbers that always have to go up.

[wesleyfravel]

Legally no. A judge ruled recently that AI material is can not be Copyrighted. And I put money on Hollywood valuing that over the cost of writers.

[DavidJamesHenry]

I am a Hollywood writer fresh out of the film school oven and it's actually genuinely nice to hear someone discuss the strike from outside without saying that the work of my colleagues is so bad that they deserve to be unemployed and homeless

[cstephen]

AI isn't going to 'write' better stories but they'll be cheaper so the studios will go with it until they lose more money. Executives think they *are* the company and the people doing the work are just resources to make *them* money.

[accooper]

Writers do not get to pick the shows that get made, they may even have to hit certain plot points to appease the studios. Additionally, plot points are decided in a writers room and then each episode is handed off to a writer or writers. They are working off of the idea of someone’s idea of someone’s idea of a 70 year old IP. They can’t make good content if we force them to reboot Shrek every 5 years.

[derpydood]

So what I'm hearing is, don't replace the writers and actors with A.I., replace the marketing department. Just imagine how much money you could save by using an intern with a laptop instead. You could even afford to pay that intern a livable wage, and still pay only a fraction of the price.

[Davis_]

When the film industry was in its infancy in the 1910's, Thomas Edison and a cartel of other film technology developers created a trust to monopolize film technology, and those who use it. This lead to a bunch of folks to leave New England for places like Orlando and Hollywood as well as the passing of modern anti-trust and anti-monopoly laws we have on the books today (and rarely enforced). Maybe I'm being too much of a history/film history geek, and maybe I'm giving Hollywood's writers and actors too much credit to want to do something like that but this feels like the starting's of corporate greed causing a second film industry schism that killed it and saw it reborn somewhere else.

[AnimeKaiserWillyII]

you forgot a key issue at play here: Hollywood won't be able to copyright AI written scripts

[lonelychameleon]

Little did we know that the Hollywood Elites™️ had already devised a new sinister plan: upload Bob Iger’s mind into a new super computer and develop their own AI.

[blomgaming]

Cant wait to see a movie and get the same feeling as when im eating a 4 dollar industrial meatball pack

[jason]

You always have hilarious visuals. Not the normal “practical, simple, and direct” boring graphics you’d see in COMM 101 class (or other YouTubers). Awesome job, I love your work!