The ChatGPT-generated drama The Last Screenwriter won’t win any Oscars. But why are cinemas afraid to show it? Artificial intelligence is the great existential threat of our time: if you’re not convinced, just ask Jennifer Lopez . In the recent Netflix film Atlas , she plays a scientist battling a malign computer programme which is trying to wipe out humanity – the latest in a long line of such virtual villains, from 2001: A Space Odyssey ’s HAL 9000 to the stiffly tailored agents of The Matrix .
Meanwhile, in the real world, artificial intelligence isn’t only co-starring in films: it’s started writing them too. The forthcoming independent feature The Last Screenwriter looks like an ordinary movie – and for the most part it was made like one, by real people with costumes and lines. But every last one of those lines was dreamt up by an AI : specifically ChatGPT, an online chatbot which wrote the screenplay over four days, based on a single, 17-word prompt.
Appropriately, the film is about that very process. It centres on an award-winning screenwriter called Jack, who experiences great financial success – and a creative crisis – when he collaborates with an experimental new AI programme. The Last Screenwriter was due to premiere at London’s Prince Charles Cinema on Sunday evening – but earlier this week, the event was cancelled after the venue received around 160 complaints from its customer base.
This puts it in the ignominious company of Kevin Spacey’s.
