‘Black Mirror’ Creator Had ChatGPT Write a ‘Black Mirror’ Episode and It Was ‘S—‘: ‘There’s Not Any Real Original Thought Here’
variety.comZack Sharf Digital News Director “Black Mirror” creator Charlie Brooker revealed to Empire magazine that he went full “Black Mirror” by asking the artificial intelligence chatbot known as ChatGPT to write an episode of his beloved anthology series.
The final results were “shit,” according to Brooker. “I’ve toyed around with ChatGPT a bit,” Brooker said. “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 shit.
Because all it’s done is look up all the synopses of ‘Black Mirror’ episodes, and sort of mush them together. Brooker added, “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.” While the ChatGPT-scripted “Black Mirror” episode was unusable, it did prove helpful for Brooker in pointing out several “Black Mirror” cliches. “I was aware that I had written lots of episodes where someone goes, ‘Oh, I was inside a computer the whole time!'”, Brooker said. “So I thought, ‘I’m just going to chuck out any sense of what I think a ‘Black Mirror’ episode is.’ There’s no point in having an anthology show if you can’t break your own rules.
Just a sort of nice, cold glass of water in the face.” “Black Mirror” is gearing up to debut its sixth season, which will consist of five new episodes.
Read more on variety.com
