The AI Programmes Hollywood Screenwriters Fear

Hollywood writers are striking amidst a dispute with studios over fees and growing fears that Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be used to write scripts.

The Writers Guild of America is demanding studios offer guarantees that artificial intelligence won't be utilised to generate new scripts from writers' previous work.

They also want to ensure that they are not asked to rewrite drafts of scripts created by AI.

The developments come after Warner Brothers signed a contract with AI startup Cinelytic in order to predict the success of a film based on various factors, such as budget, brand and cast.

Cinelytic's AI algorithm will conduct pattern research to determine the value of a movie and then decide whether or not it should be commissioned.

Warner Bros will use the software during the early stages of production.

Meanwhile, Epagogix, a company based in the UK, uses data from a film archive to estimate box office and make script recommendations to owners.

Epagogix and Cinelytic's offering joins a list of other AI developments that include DreamStudio AI, GPT-3 and Jasper AI.

In the last year, artificial intelligence has been a staple in several films - from Alita: Battle Angel to Spider-Man Far From Home and Terminator: Dark Fate. This year, AI is used not just to be the subject
matter of the script but also for reading scripts and recommending the studio to buy the film rights.

The software will read historical data on movie performances and compare it with current information.

Then, the software uses machine learning to analyze the data and calculate how movies will perform on the charts.

Warner Bros is not the only studio to use artificial intelligence in the film industry. In recent years, many movie studios have used AI to make decisions, whether they are in Hollywood or Bollywood.

20th Century Fox, for example, uses a system based on artificial intelligence/machine learning called Merlin in order to match genres of movies with its audience.

The system compares the data with other films using big data and computer vision.

The AI/ML system compares datasets to assist 20th Century Fox with identifying ideal demographics and genres for any film.

A high-tech Belgian company, ScriptBook uses artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, and natural language processing in order to analyze scripts and predict revenue.

Nadira Azermai, CEO of ScriptBook, claimed that their platform accurately forecasts the financial returns of a film.

Vault, an Israeli startup, has used artificial intelligence to watch movies with its demographic audiences.

Pilot, another company that offers similar services, claims to predict the box office revenue of a movie before its release.

This innovation allows smaller production houses and studios to invest in films without fearing a poor return.

The artificial intelligence model is a way to ensure that investors are confident and get a higher return on their investments. It can also help businesses stay in business for longer.

But a 2016 academic article co-authored by Michael T Lash and Kang Zhao claimed that an artificial intelligence trained to make predictions about profitability could only do so by using movie information such as the theme and cast of a movie.

However, one of the co-authors argued that "these types of statistical approaches are not without flaws."

A lot of these predictions are blindingly obvious.

It doesn't take a trained AI to know that a movie with big stars such as Tom Cruise, Leonardo DiCaprio, or Brad Pitt can be a box office hit.

It also shows the conservative nature in which the system makes decisions based on historical data and is, therefore, unable to take into account the evolving crowd or the changing tastes of the audience.