Black Mirror Creator Used ChatGPT to Write New Episodes, Results Were 'Sh*t'

Neural networks like ChatGPT and Bard "have taken the world by storm." If you don't believe us, take a look at your Twitter feed: there are thousands of tech bros that will tell you just that there.

The sudden surge in neural network development has led many professionals to feel vulnerable, and the concerns about "AI taking over our jobs" are at an all-time high.

Amid all the other people worried by the new tech, writers are among the ones most concerned: after all, both ChatGPT and Bard are text-based AIs.

Banning neural networks from case studying and even accessing their works is among the main demands of the Writer's Guild of America's writers who are currently on strike.

This whole situation has been calling for its hero, and he arrived: Charlie Brooker, the creator of the famous show Black Mirror, decided to toy around with ChatGPT.

Brooker tasked the neural network with writing a script for a new episode of the series and wanted to see how well the AI would pull off this task.

We can't be certain, but we'd guess that the creator of a show about scary new technologies asking a scary new technology to write a script about scary new technologies is third-level irony.

Don't quote us on that, though.

Anyway, admittedly we can all breathe freely for a while more: Brooker was totally not impressed with the neural network's results.

"I've toyed around with ChatGPT a bit. 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 sh*t," shared Charlie.

"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,'" explained the Black Mirror creator.

ChatGPT didn't prove completely useless, though.

As the network mashed various Black Mirror stereotypes together to try and "create" something new, it helped Brooker see his franchise from a different perspective — and he decided to write an episode that goes in a completely opposite direction from what he typically does.

But we don't have to worry: the fact that Charlie Brooker had a great idea for S6 of Black Mirror occurred to him not thanks to the neural network but rather in spite of it.

So it seems like we still have some time until this technology develops into an actual AI… And we swiftly go from Black Mirror straight to Terminator or The Matrix.

Source: Empire