Artificial Intelligence (AI) – the modern pen for the storyteller – is ushering in a new era of filmmaking, opening up a realm of realm of possibilities that was once a figment of Fritz Lang's imagination when he made Metropolis (a 1927 film conceiving the war of I against mankind). While Lang portrayed AI as an entity that lacks the human heart and is thus evil, Ridley Scott created a contrary narrative in the 1982 movie Blade Runner (where androids were portrayed to develop empathy and human sentiments). While these pathbreaking films amongst many others, were considered futuristic and rather impossible, the paradigm has shifted completely as of today.
AI has not just become a reality but has taken over every aspect of human life. It is no surprise that the sentiments towards it are skewed. Gareth Edwards' new sci-fi thriller, The Creator portrays a war between humans and AI with a message of caution1 about the Frankenstein that AI creates. This thematic perspective is not just reflected in international cinema but has also found its way into mainstream Indian filmography with the recent release of the film "CTRL" on Netflix. The plot makes a realistic portrayal of the creator economy which not only has an overarching influence on the life choices of the youth but is luring the youth with incomprehensible amounts of money to endorse tech applications that are in the grey from the standpoint of regulatory compliance. Further, the plot hinges on an AI application that enables the protagonist to erase elements from her photographs and results in unforeseen consequences including data theft and the manipulation of her decisions.
In this paper, we have adopted a practical approach in which we wrote a prompt on ChatGPT (a large language AI model built on OpenAI) directing it to generate a screenplay for a film. The prompt followed the course of a natural human conversation and what is depicted below, is a conversational setting of the context where ChatGPT reads the mind of the user and directs the user to provide specific prompts. Having confirmed the context, ChatGPT produces an outline of a script across four primary Acts, a sample scene with dialogues and an opening scene for the film (collectively referred to as "the Generative Script").
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Footnote
1. 10 great films about artificial intelligence | BFI. https://www.bfi.org.uk/lists/10-great-films-about-artificial-intelligence
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