The software won’t be winning an Emmy anytime soon.
Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker has revealed that he tried to get controversial AI software ChatGPT to write an episode of the anthology series. The results, by his account, were not too surprising.
“I’ve toyed around with ChatGPT a bit,” Brooker said in an interview with Empire. “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.”
However, there was an upside to the five-time Emmy winning writer using the programme – it helped him realise what not to do when writing episodes and also pointed out some clichés the series has generated since its creation.
“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.”
After a four year hiatus, Black Mirror is once again returning to our screens for its sixth season. The Netflix show consists of five new episodes (all generated by humans, not AI) and it also has one hell of a cast.
Aaron Paul, Annie Murphy, Ben Barnes, Danny Ramirez, Himesh Patel, Josh Hartnett, Kate Mara, Michael Cera, Paapa Essiedu, Rob Delaney, Rory Culkin, Salma Hayek Pinault and Zazie Beetz will all appear in the upcoming season.
Season 6 of Black Mirror debuts June 15 on Netflix.
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