Black Mirror's Creator Had ChatGPT Write An Episode (And It Was Awful)

For a long time, whenever anyone worried out loud about AI, the concern was always about some Skynet-style scenario whereby a machine becomes self-aware and obliterates the human race. But, as it turns out, all that needed to happen for AI to threaten our current way of life was for some programmers to make a chatbot that could dredge the internet and spit out text that reads as though it was written by some barely-conscious human.

Now, these Large Language Models (LLMs) are the threat du jour, the most prominent example being OpenAI's ChatGPT, which has played a big part in alerting everyone to just how rapidly these models are developing. And with Joe Russo trumpeting the arrival of an AI-ruled future, the prospect of some awful AI-written movie draws ever nearer. It's no wonder, then, that the ongoing WGA strike is partly fueled by a concern over AI, and Hollywood's refusal to establish rules that govern how the technology is used.

All of which sounds a bit like the plot of a "Black Mirror" episode. The rivetingly unsettling anthology series from Charlie Brooker has been running for a full five seasons, providing us with an array of grim vignettes that capture various dystopian visions of the future. Now, "Black Mirror" season 6 is almost upon us, promising to once again upset us all with its depictions of tech gone awry. And, perhaps surprisingly, judging by the official synopses for each of the five episodes, Brooker won't be exploring an AI-ruled future. Which might have to do with the fact he's already had a go at ChatGPT and wasn't all that impressed.

Anyone who's seen that god awful AI-generated Wes Anderson "Star Wars" trailer will know that AI has a long way to go before it replaces human creators entirely, which is something Charlie Brooker discovered when trying out ChatGPT.

The writer and show creator spoke to Empire, where he revealed that he had "toyed around" with OpenAI's chatbot and asked it to write an entire episode of "Black Mirror." Unfortunately, the results were less than impressive, with Brooker saying:

"It comes up with something that, at first glance, reads plausibly, but on second glance, is s***. 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.' It's [1970s impressionist] Mike Yarwood — there's a topical reference."

This is basically the writing equivalent of when someone made that "Great Gatsby" AI video and it was blindingly obvious that it had repurposed actual shots from Baz Luhrmann's 2013 movie. The current technology, whether LLMs or visual AI tech, is just drawing from examples that came before it and repackaging them. Which may or may not be all that big a deal, considering repackaging existing IP is basically Hollywood's modus operandi. Still, it's nice to see thoughtful, critical creators such as Brooker remaining unconvinced and unimpressed by the whole thing.

At the same time Charlie Brooker is dismissing AI, there's plenty of people championing it. Those fake Drake songs caused Twitter to be flooded by comments from people entirely unbothered about the fact Drake did not, in fact, make the songs, with a veritable conflagration of fire emojis burning up the comments. And at a recent WGA panel at the ATX TV Festival, writer and WGA East member Greg Iwinski, delivered this ominous line: "The threat of us being replaced is not that [AI is] ever going to match our quality. It's going to be that our bosses don't care."

The central concern here, is that even if AI products are terrible and devoid of "real original thought," the people in charge of commissioning creative products won't care. But it's more than that. What if we, as consumers don't care? Happily, Brooker himself isn't necessarily all that cynical about the future.

In his Empire interview, he said:

"If I sit and think about it too much, I get very gloomy and think, 'Oh, we'll just end up in a terrible sort of knife-fight over resources on a dying rock.' That's basically, probably the answer. But equally, we are quite resourceful, I think that the younger generation that is coming up seems more level-headed. I think? I don't know."

Asked about how he thinks things will pan out, Brooker envisioned a "Matrix"-like future in which we're all, "stuck in the equivalent of a looping GIF of somebody eating a chocolate eclair, while you're just basically being used for minerals and energy by some sort of sentient robot civilisation." Which, honestly, I'll take over having to witness whatever AI-written monstrosities Hollywood inevitably churns out.

"Black Mirror" season 6 arrives on Netflix June 15, 2023.