"Hey Hollywood, I Just Made a Seinfeld Episode" - ChatGPT

Opinion | In Hollywood Strike, AI Is Nemesis

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Date: May 5, 2023

"The BBC even commissioned ChatGPT, an AI language model, to create opening monologues for late-night programs affected by the strike. This has sparked indignation..."

Greg's Words

This is just the beginning and it seems almost 'cosmic' with so many influences converging onto this point in time; the fear of covid, remote working, the restructuring of commercial real estate, artificial intelligence's impact on knowledge workers, and now a strike by a vulnerable segment of the job market, writers. Bad timing.

It doesn't take much to favorably compare the most rudimentary content created by ChatGPT with newscasting, copywriting, and scriptwriting.  The AI does well enough without much prompt engineering - give the controls to directors and watch the number of soap operas, sitcoms, and nightly talk shows quadruple overnight.  With less cost and just as much revenue.

AI doesn't get rid of people, it eliminates rote and mundane processes like creating a treatment, an outline for a show, and creating a script.

So I tried it, with a little help from the AI in the Sky:

"You are a Hollywood writer with decades of experience writing sitcoms for TV.  Put together a treatment and the first two acts of a Siendeld show where the characters witness a UFO landing, a job loss, and meeting the most beautiful woman in New York City.  Provide the storyline, scene description, and script."

In less than a minute:

Treatment:

In this special episode of Seinfeld, the four main characters - Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer - each experience a close encounter with a UFO landing in Central Park, causing all of their lives to change in unexpected ways. Jerry loses a job opportunity, George loses his job, Elaine meets the most beautiful woman in New York City, and Kramer becomes obsessed with the UFO phenomenon. Through their witty banter and clever situational comedy, the gang comes together to navigate these strange events.

Act 1:

Scene 1: Jerry's apartment

OpenAI's ChatGPT Predicts Potential Apocalyptic Scenarios

In an interesting twist, OpenAI's ChatGPT, an AI language model, shared its own predictions on potential apocalyptic scenarios for humanity. 

Greg's Words

Everybody is talking about how AI is going to destroy humanity when it is more likely humanity will destroy humanity.

Heavy hitters in the realm of science, business and AI log in with views on our demise.  Even the AI Wonderboy-de-jour chips in.

Check out our quick take on the end of the world as we know it.

__________

Key highlights:

• Tech leaders, including Elon Musk, express concerns over AI's rapid development and potential negative impacts.
• Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson warns of the potential "nail in the coffin" for the internet due to AI-generated fakes.
• ChatGPT shares four potential apocalyptic scenarios resulting from various threats to humanity.

_________

This is The Way: AI and Art

Is Art in the eyes of the creator or beholder?  When an artist creates, does that artist worry about the process of creation?  Of course.  Does the beholder?  Maybe.

Here is the dirty little truth.  The Great Ones simply 'do', adhering to their process.  The listener, observer is experiencing a moment in time REGARDLESS of how that work of art became to be.

We're not thinking of the years Michelangelo spent on his back painting a ceiling - we are impacted, at that unique point in time, by the finished product.

The key question is, "Will AI elicit the same emotional response when creating art?"  

Right now, people are responding as though AI is a threat.  For the mediocre, AI is a threat. While somewhere in the world, artists and creators are gravitating toward AI and embracing it as a new tool; perhaps even a newly discovered color.

Unfortunately, and inevitably, actors will be replaced.  Copywriters will be replaced. Most practical effects folks will be displaced - it is the way of things.  

I point to Disney's "Mandalorian"; if you know, you know.