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The writers strike is rooted in several existential issues, but it seems the one everybody wants to talk about is AI. It’s new and sexy. The flashing red danger signs coming from pioneers in the field seem to just make the whole thing more attractive. A few clever quotes out of ChatGPT and dollar signs started rolling in studio executives’ eyeballs. They’re hoping there might be discounted shortcuts to developing good stories, or at least workable ones, for their streaming platforms. But I can tell you right now, there aren’t.
Story is one of those things that’s so ubiquitous everyone thinks it’s simple and obvious. We all know a story needs a beginning, a middle, and an end. We’ve all understood that the end of a story should feel both surprising and utterly inevitable. There are untold volumes written about the power of story, dating back millenia. Even Christ Himself taught chiefly in parables. I could wax poetic about storytelling as meaning making for days.
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But let’s be honest — no one beholden to shareholders cares about any of that. We’ve all seen Succession. But they should care, especially if they want to keep making money. Because with all that’s been learned, analyzed, and written about what makes great story, there’s still an alchemy to it. There’s an unknowable magic factor that can elude even the most gifted and experienced storytellers sometimes. It’s this magic everyone’s trying to monetize. The value is in that organic piece that can’t be decoded or commodified, no matter how we try.
The other day on the picket lines, I was chatting with another writer about always taking the time to sleep on a draft before turning it in. Most writers I know acknowledge a place in the subconscious, most accessible on the edge of dreams, where plot problems are solved and groundbreaking ideas are born. It lives somewhere between a light slumber and a drowsy awakening. It feels spiritual. I don’t know a lot about technology, but I’m guessing AI doesn’t have that.
A human writer can’t compete with AI’s speed or its ability to replicate images.
AI can let Joe Schmo cast himself as Iron Man in a personalized Marvel movie. But Joe Schmo wouldn’t want to be Iron Man in the first place without that first MCU film. That movie was born from an alchemical blend of a whip-smart script (penned by multiple writers), Favreau’s deft direction, and the impish charm of Robert Downey, Jr. They reinvigorated the superhero genre with a fresh tone. And tone, especially a fresh one, lives on a razor’s edge that can only be seen with an organic, visionary eye. It defies data and sometimes even logic.
Data is invaluable but it’s not creative, even when it’s generative. Data can’t tell you what people want, because the people don’t even know what people want. If data future casting were accurate, you’d be reading this in the metaverse in between episodes of your favorite shows on Quibi. I’m not suggesting writers are psychic, but artists of all kinds do tend to be prognosticators. The studios want what they want, faster and for less money. (Baby, don’t we all?) But it’s called “breaking story” for a reason. The first idea is rarely, if ever, the best one. Crafting narratives that entertain is hard, mostly communal work that takes as long as it takes.
People engage with story (or not) based on how it makes them feel. They align themselves with characters they strongly empathize with, root for, or despise. Will people watch a certain degree of regurgitated nonsense they’ve seen before? Sure, to a point. I’ve seen every episode of Love is Blind. But will they consistently, continuously keep paying for reduxes? In a world where every family’s dollar means more than ever, I highly doubt it. One of the Guild signs on the picket lines says “AI Doesn’t Have Childhood Trauma.” It doesn’t. And that matters. We turn to stories to see and understand ourselves. Basic plots and themes might be easy for computers to replicate, but that’s not what studios sell.
If the goal is to make shows people will value enough to pay for, there is still an untapped gold mine. The vast majority of storytellers from historically excluded communities have long been underestimated, dismissed, or noted into oblivion by the studios. Higher profits don’t lie in cutting artists out, but in untying their hands. Abbott Elementary. Squid Game. Everything Everywhere All At Once. Hits like these happen time and time again, but are considered outliers every time. Character-based stories, not issues-based ones. Characters fully thriving in independent identity, not white-washed or otherwise sanitized for mass appeal. Messy. Alive. Even if you wanted to build these kinds of projects with AI, there haven’t been enough of them to create meaningful data sets. Stories rooted in AI will not only be derivative, they’ll be racist, ableist, homophobic, and misogynistic as well.
The chief at Warner Discovery paid lip service to the value of human writers the other day, saying that great storytelling comes from great writers. “The best creatives” as he called them, would want to work at Warner Discovery in part because of their “vast library of intellectual property.” (The derivative nature of IP is a different essay for another time, but the AI conversation stems from that same line of anti-creative, risk-averse thinking.) That the vast library he spoke of is built on the alchemy of human stories told by human writers. That magical element can’t be replicated, and it won’t be sprinkled on top of a cheap imitation. It’s fundamental and foundational or it’s not there at all. At the end of the day, this AI writing experiment will fail. The only question is whether or not it destroys the writer pipeline and takes the entire industry down with it. But if it does, and if AI should rage out of control and end civilization as we know it, the humans who remain will find themselves sitting around campfires, telling each other great stories.
Angela L. Harvey is a writer/producer who’s most recently worked on American Horror Story (and American Horror Stories), and serves as co-chair of Think Tank for Inclusion & Equity.
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