From “Metropolis†to “M3GAN,†screenwriters have long loved stories about artificial intelligence.
But in recent months that technology has leaped off their pages and into their industry. It was one of the main reasons why the Writers Guild of America recently went on strike for almost five months — and although they’re now back to work, AI is here to stay.
Under the terms of the Guild’s new contract, writers will be free to incorporate artificial intelligence software into their creative process as long as their employer consents, but they can’t be compelled to use it. Studios, meanwhile, will have to tell writers when giving them something AI-generated and are barred from using the tech to write or rewrite literary material.
It’s a strange new world for storytelling, one of mankind’s earliest and most foundational traditions.
But how useful will this technology actually be for writers who want its help generating ideas or sharpening drafts? And if they do use it, will viewers at home be able to tell?
To put these questions to the test, The Times compiled a series of excerpts from various unproduced scripts and screenplays. Some were written by human WGA members, while others were generated by the GPT-4 generative AI platform, which we asked to come up with story ideas and then write imaginary scenes from them.
Those excerpts are below. Can you tell which ones a human wrote and which were machine-made?
