Could the use of AI and its endless possibilities be a kind of creative "anabolic steroid" for writers and screenwriters?
It's a fact. All segments of the industry are trying to ride the wave of possibilities offered by Artificial Intelligence. At the end of 2018, we had an AI-generated painting being sold at Christie's for US$432,000.00, remember? An irreversible trend, no doubt. But one of the applications that interests me most, and which I managed to see a bit of here at SXSW, is the use of Artificial Intelligence in content creation.
I attended a panel called “AI and the Future of Storytelling,” where one of the speakers was Mr. Douglas Eck, a Staff Research Scientist at Google. In one of the slides, he showed the opening paragraph of a story, written by a human. Then, in another slide, he showed three more paragraphs, written purely by AI. A story created by AI, from a human “stem cell”—just one paragraph.
According to Eck, the story still contained some inconsistencies, but it left the question open regarding the possibilities (or avenues?) that are emerging. Could the use of AI and its infinite possibilities be a kind of creative "anabolic steroid" for writers and screenwriters? Would the creation of entire universes, generated by AI and not by humans, be any less legitimate? Or could this be the new duo of the future: screenwriter and AI?
I confess that several questions arose in my mind, and that's exactly the great thing about being here at SXSW. A place that provokes and takes us out of the box. In my opinion, we shouldn't deny technology, but rather use it to open up new possibilities.
Ultimately, Artificial Intelligence still doesn't know what it's like to have feelings, it still doesn't have a beer at a bar with friends, it still doesn't know what it's like to have a child, it still hasn't been dumped. When it comes to creativity and the power of storytelling, we are still unbeatable. For now.
