'The Last Screenwriter' Movie with AI Scriptwriter Faces Backlash, Cancels World Premiere

The world premiere for a London movie dubbed 'The Last Screenwriter'\ with an artificial intelligence-written script has been canceled due to a swarm of overwhelmingly negative feedback before the feature's premiere. This is despite the movie being called by its director as a "contribution to the cause."

This Sunday was scheduled to feature the new play at the Prince Charles Cinema in London's West End, which usually hosts screenings of cult and art films. On social media, the theater did, however, indicate that the screening would not proceed.

The Prince Charles Cinema stated that the comments the theater got in the 24 hours following the film's promotion brought to light the serious concerns many of their patrons had about the employment of AI in place of a writer, which relates to a larger problem in the business. The Last Screenwriter is a Swiss film directed by Peter Luisi and starring Nicholas Pople.

It tells the story of a renowned screenwriter whose world is turned upside down when they come across a state-of-the-art AI scriptwriting system that matches their abilities and outperforms them in empathy and comprehension of human emotions. OpenAI's ChatGPT 4.0 is credited for writing the screenplay. 

According to sources, Luisi stated that despite canceling the showing due to 200 objections, a private screening for the actors and crew will still occur in London. He continued by saying that he believed people were unaware of the initiative since, he assumed, all they heard was that it was the first movie to be written totally by artificial intelligence. 

Read Also: ChatGPT Creativity Is Being Killed by Censorship When Used in Scriptwriting, Study Finds 

Screenwriters Against AI

Several organizations are looking to develop policies against AI, as artists worldwide continue to be cautious about its consequences for cinema. On April 11, a global alliance of some of the largest screenwriting guilds was scheduled to press for a series of demands to assist in safeguarding authors against artificial intelligence. 

Strong licensing procedures that ask authors' permission before using any of their work as AI training data are part of this. In addition, the resolution asks member groups to work toward ensuring that datasets of marketed LLMs or any other AI technology contain only property rights licensed for such usage by 2024. 

Projected Policies Against AI Screenwriters

The five principles, it is said, prohibit the use of AI or huge language models to replace writers and that only writers are capable of creating literary works.

Along with ensuring that AI is not entitled to copyright or author rights, they also introduce reasonable fees when writers' creative work is included in LLMs or AI programs, clearly consent to the utilization of writers' intellectual property to train AI, and are transparent about the use of AI-generated material when providing writing services (such as editing or redlining).

Related Article: Google Deepmind Study Reveals AI Struggles to Write Comedy