The Creative Limits of AI: It’s a Consumer Product Aimed at Engagement Above All

Like with all new tech innovations, AI promises the world. We are told AI will change filmmaking, bringing a new set of tools that will help creators iterate better and work faster. Putting speculation fueled by big venture capital dollars aside, one question many are asking is what can AI actually do now?

That’s a question writer/director Scott Z. Burns set out to answer when he used large language models (LLMs) programs, like ChatGPT, to help with a script for the sequel to his and Steven Soderbergh’s “Contagion.” It’s a six-month journey he documented in the eight-part Audible podcast series “What Could Go Wrong?,” and Burns discussed his findings on this week’s episode of the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast.

While Burns explored the complexities of the issues surrounding AI, and took a nuanced approach to figuring out what it could and could not do for screenwriters, he walked away from the experience with one big concern.

“This is really a consumer product, and you need to understand that you’re being sold, and that’s why they’re promising us the world,” said Burns.

As Burns documents in “What Could Go Wrong,” there are a number of times different AI models prioritized keeping him happy and engaged, over being a professional tool.

“This happens a number of times in the podcast, where the AIs that are put in front of me flirt a lot, and they flatter you a lot. And then you suddenly go, ‘Oh wait, now I get it.  The more engagement they get out of me, then that’s good for their numbers and that’s good for their constituency, and that will help them someday with ad revenue,” said Burns, adding the the illusory experience of the AI getting to know him, and trying to think like him, was a mixed bag experience. “It’s really just sort of mirroring back to you, and again, it’s important to always remember this is a consumer product, and it is built to manipulate you.”

This is why Burns thinks it is revealing that the biggest “Contagion” AI breakthroughs came from “Lexter,” which he prompted to be a tough-minded, sharp tongued movie critic, rather than a screenwriting companion.

“Rather than making it a mirror of me, [Lexter] was almost adversarial,” said Burns.

As Burns previously detailed to IndieWire, there are specific and limited ways he has found AI to be a useful screenwriting tool, most of which center around iterating on an idea or premise.

“AI is useful in that regard, if you have an idea and you’re trying to go, ‘Okay, so what do we do now with this idea? What are, what are the permutations? What are the possible things?’ It’s really good at making lists. It’ll give you a list of 10 things,” said Burns.

Burns said those lists, at times, could be helpful in accelerating the thinking process a writer naturally goes through, but that was not the case with coming up with the actual original ideas to iterate off. At one point during the podcast, Burns is showed how to create an AI writers room so he can blue sky an idea with a collection of different LLMs, each prompted to approach the project as a writer with a specific background, life experience, and expertise — as if to mirror the diversity of perspectives a showrunner might aim to create when putting together a room. Burns wasn’t impressed by the results.

“I feel like even reassembling the constituent parts of four or five AI writers just meant you were making a different derivative kind of piece,” said Burns, who called the results “pretty anodyne derivative ideas.”

And it’s here that the writer/director warned his Hollywood colleagues not to ignore the issues surrounding AI, and not cede ground that AI is incapable of coming up with original ideas behind previous studio successes.

“I think the big threat here is that we are so timid around [AI], and so reluctant to roll up our sleeves and go, ‘What does this thing do? How do we use it? What is it good for?’  That we allow the streamers to instead use it and trace the outlines of movies that are going to be really derivative, and then give them to our agents and say, ‘You got anybody who can write this?,’” said Burns. “That to me is the end of Hollywood, and we need to protect ourselves against that. At the very least, we need to start saying, ‘Hey, if you’re using an AI in this process, you’ve got to let the consumer know.”

To hear Scott Z. Burns’ full interview, subscribe to the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform.