Can a computer write a good script? Sunspring shows the first results

Sunspring review

What will our future look like? And then I’m not even talking about the climate or a political situation, but mainly about technology. Artificial intelligence is quickly evolving and Google has recently shown that self learning computers are able to beat the world champion at the game Go. A movie like Her already shows the development it is going through might eventually to something which is able to think better than a human. The impact of that on society will be enormous. Will a technology company still have a need for programmers or testers when artificial intelligence can do their work effortlessly, 24 hours a day and much faster?

Sunspring review

Fortunately we aren’t there yet, but as human beings we are curious what we are able to have a computer learn and what he is able to make with this “knowledge”. Director Oscar Sharp entered a festival during which a movie had to be made within 48 hours. He decided to contact a friend of his, Ross Goodwin, who specialises in AI. He had an AI called Benjamin, which he fed an enormous list of science fiction films and series. Benjamin read the all and based on them wrote his own script, including directions for the actors to follow. The end result can be called unique and bizarre and having that knowledge about how it was written, very funny as well:

Although the dialog generally doesn’t seem to make sense, the actors manage to present it in a way that you can’t help to be fascinated by what you are watching. This really can’t be called a masterpiece, but it is an interesting first step towards automatically generated scripts. For more information about the process I suggest you to check out this article on Ars Technica.

2 thoughts on “Can a computer write a good script? Sunspring shows the first results

  1. Hmmm, they might think that a machine can do every man’s job. But w/ films, there’s that emotional portion that non human could ever feel or relate to, so even if a machine can *write* something watchable, I think the emotional component will always be missing.

  2. Pingback: It’s No Game – Short film | My Filmviews

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