‘Black Mirror’ Creator Charlie Brooker Tried Using ChatGPT to Write an Episode: It Was ‘Sh*t’
“Black Mirror” creator Charlie Brooker opted to use a screenwriter’s worst nightmare to generate an episode of the psychological thriller anthology series.
Brooker revealed to Empire that he attempted to use A.I. bot ChatGPT to write an episode of the upcoming sixth season. The rise of A.I. in the writers’ room is one contention of the ongoing WGA strike.
“I’ve toyed around with ChatGPT a bit,” Brooker said. “The first thing I did was type ‘generate “Black Mirror” episode’ and it comes up with something that, at first glance, reads plausibly, but on second glance, is shit.”
He added, “Because all it’s done is look up all the synopses of ‘Black Mirror’ episodes, and sort of mush them together. Then if you dig a bit more deeply you go, ‘Oh, there’s not actually any real original thought here.'”
However, Brooker admitted that the OpenAI chatbot alerted him to a pattern in his own storytelling.
“I was aware that I had written lots of episodes where someone goes, ‘Oh, I was inside a computer the whole time!'” Brooker said. “So I thought, ‘I’m just going to chuck out any sense of what I think a ‘Black Mirror’ episode is.’ There’s no point in having an anthology show if you can’t break your own rules. Just a sort of nice, cold glass of water in the face.”
The sixth season of beloved mind-bending series “Black Mirror” includes an ensemble cast of Aaron Paul, Michael Cera, Salma Hayek Pinault, Myha’la Herrold, Kate Mara, Danny Ramirez, Paapa Essiedu, Rob Delaney, Zazie Beetz, and Salma Hayek Pinault. The season kicks off with “Joan Is Awful” about an average woman (Hayek Pinault) who learns that a global streaming platform has launched a TV drama adaptation of her life, in which she is played by the global icon Salma Hayek Pinault in a meta twist. Pankiw helms the episode, which co-stars Annie Murphy, Himesh Patel, Michael Cera, and Rob Delaney.
The series is set to return to the streaming platform on June 15.