Faced with the ill effects of the technology at the heart of the hit series Black Mirror, creator Charlie Brooker decided to test the much-discussed artificial intelligence technology himself.
During a recent interview with Empire magazine, the television writer said he actually “played around with ChatGPT a bit” while writing the latest season of the anthology series.
“The first thing I did was type in ‘generate Black Mirror episode,’ and it came out with something that reads plausible on first glance, but sucks on second glance,” Brooker said of the technology’s ability to write a screenplay. “All we have to do is look up all the synopses of the Black Mirror episodes and sort of put them together. Then, when you dig a little deeper, you come to the conclusion, “Oh, there’s actually no really original thought here.” It is [1970s impressionist] Mike Yarwood – there is a current reference.”
The Netflix show, whose five episodes for its upcoming sixth season were confirmed last week, shows how the use of modern technology can strike back at humanity, with each episode based on a different reality.
Though Brooker’s experiments with AI technology didn’t go as planned, he found there were some insights that could help him plan for the show’s upcoming season.
“I was aware that I had written a lot of episodes where someone would say, ‘Oh, I was in a computer the whole time,'” he explained. “So I was like, ‘I’m just going to give up any notion of what I think a Black Mirror episode is.'”
The Emmy-winning author added, “There’s no point doing an anthology show if you can’t break your own rules. Just kind of a nice cold glass of water on your face.”
Brooker previously said he’s “broadened the parameters” of what to expect from a Black Mirror episode in Season 6, due out June 15 on Netflix.