Black Mirror written by ChatGPT: creator asked AI to write an episode of his hit Netflix show
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The creator of the darkly addictive sci-fi series Black Mirror thought it appropriate to ask ChatGPT to call up an episode for Season 6 only to find the chatbot ‘is sh***’.
Charlie Brooker, 52, said he typed in ‘generate Black Mirror episode’ and received a story ‘that mixed up all the others’.
The first thing Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker did when everyone first tried ChatGPT was to type “generate Black Mirror episode.”
Speaking to Empire, Brooker found that there was no real thought behind the AI-generated script, just that it was “plausible.”
Brooker – who has written most episodes of the terrifying, Twilight Zone-esque series since its 2011 first season on Channel 4 in the UK – said his brush with an AI-generated doppelgänger of his own show taught him to be less robotic himself. to be.
The Black Mirror creator’s experience with ChatGPT has encouraged him to make bolder creative choices with future seasons of the dystopian anthology series. An upcoming episode ‘Beyond The Sea’, starring Josh Hartnett (above) takes place in an alternate 1969
ChatGPT first launched in November, sparking excitement and alarm over its ability to generate convincingly human-like essays, poems, form letters, and conversational responses to almost any question.
“I was aware that I had written a lot of episodes where someone said, ‘Oh, I was in a computer all the time!'” Brooker said. empire magazine during an exclusive tease of the new season, which lands on Netflix this month.
“So I thought, ‘I’m just going to throw out any idea of what I think is a Black Mirror episode,'” he admitted.
“It’s no use having an anthology show if you can’t break your own rules.”
Brooker likened reading ChatGPT’s version of his series to being the subject of a parody impersonation of 1970s British comedian Mike Yarwood (“there’s a topical reference,” Brooker joked.)
“Just kind of a nice cold glass of water in the face,” he said.
An upcoming installment of the series, “Beyond The Sea” starring Breaking Bad’s Kate Mara, Josh Hartnett, and Aaron Paul, sounds indicative of Brooker’s penchant for taking creative risks and bold new directions for the show.
The episode, of which exclusive stills were shared with Empire, takes place in an alternate version of 1969, in which the protagonists are put on an impossible mission.
By the end of the episode, Brooker said viewers will have experienced a “sort of dystopian past, present and future.”
Charlie Brooker, 52, said he typed in ‘generate Black Mirror episode’ and received a story ‘that mixed up all the others’
The new season of Black Mirror is coming to Netflix in June. Brooker told Empire he wants to do new things with the series, saying the goal of an anthology show is to “break your own rules.” Above Anjana Vasan stars in a new episode, ‘DEMON 79’ set in Northern England in 1979
Brooker says the time period settings for these new episodes will inform “how the characters think and behave,” including Aaron Paul’s character (above) in June’s “Beyond the Sea.”
“I had the plot idea first and then, at one point, I thought [sarcastically], ‘What if I put this in the late ’60s? That would be disturbing and cool!”
The writer, whose work spanned satire and horror before creating Black Mirror, said the idea of an alternate period piece evolved into telling a new story that was darkly and critically tied to the attitudes of that Apollon. era in the middle of the century.
“When you actually start writing it, you realize, ‘Oh, wait a minute, if this is a different time and everyone in it is from that time, that actually indicates how the characters think and behave.
“I don’t think there was a deliberate rejection of nostalgia,” Brooker said, “so much as it was just fun to do.”
Black Mirror season 6 will be released on Netflix on June 15, featuring an all-star cast led by Salma Hayek, Michael Cera and Rory Culkin – among other well-known celebrities.
Fans will be left wondering what’s real and what’s not from the very beginning, with Netflix playing a central role – and a meta twist – in the opening episode Joan Is Awful.
The dystopian show has captured the world’s attention for more than a decade now, with its twisted view of the future of technology.
And in April, fans went wild after Black Mirror made a surprising return to Twitter after four years of total silence with the tweet: “What have we missed?”