Brace yourself: Depressing outlook for the future of movies

[MsAmerica]

This is from the a weekly ethics column in the New York Times, with people sending in questions:

The Ethicist
By Kwame Anthony Appiah

I’m a Screenwriter. Is It All Right if I Use A.I.?
This new tool has been a game changer.

I write for television, both series and movies. Much of my work is historical or fact-based, and I have found that researching with ChatGPT makes Googling feel like driving to the library, combing the card catalog, ordering books and waiting weeks for them to arrive.

This new tool has been a game changer. Then I began feeding ChatGPT my scripts and asking for feedback. The notes on consistency, clarity and narrative build were extremely helpful.

Recently I went one step further: I asked it to write a couple of scenes. In seconds, they appeared — quick paced, emotional, funny, driven by a propulsive heartbeat, with dialogue that sounded like real people talking. With a few tweaks, I could drop them straight into a screenplay.

So what ethical line would I be crossing? Would it be plagiarism? Theft? Misrepresentation? I wonder what you think.

— Name Withheld

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/04/magazine/magazine-email/screenwriter-ai-ethics.html

Don't worry. The films will be shit and make no money. Eventually all the material gen AI is using to inform it's responses will be its own work anyway, and it'll just get shitter and shitter. It'll eat it's own tail.

Sounds like The Last Screenwriter. You can watch it (stick with it - the beginning is pretty poor)
https://lastscreenwriter.com/the-film/

A really interesting project.

I wouldn't be so sure, my husband works at one of the few remaining VFX houses in the UK and he was pretty sceptical of the impact AI was going to have on the industry after the initial excitement. He's now adjusted his opinion and thinks it's unlikely film production will exist in its current form in five to ten years. He's fortunate to be in systems, so in theory he'd be one of the last to go, but it's clear that management seem to be pushing everyone towards a future where they will essentially become "AI handlers". It seems impossible that the creative side of things isn't going to be significantly slimmed down. It's easy to rally public support behind protections for well-known actors against generative AI, but I am doubtful that anyone would be able to get much public support for the plight of the huge number of people who make John Lewis Christmas ads and the VFX on the rides at Disneyland, and will very soon be out of a job, much less scriptwriters.

I've just watched Chanel 4's show "will AI take my job"? It is interesting!

Interesting? Or frightening? Jeff Bezos just announced that he's replacing 500,000 employees with robots.

I hate to break it to you, but if you imagine that good movies make money and bad movies don't, you are very, very naive.

Interesting? Or frightening? Jeff Bezos just announced that he's replacing 500,000employees with robots.

That just makes Jeff Bezos an asshole!!! People are causing the damage here- everyone knows the lines, they decide to cross them. There’s a few attempts in history to shut down the progression of ai, computer geniuses that decided no, it’s not right to let this go rogue- we can all catastrophise, or we can make attempts to get on with life without taking the lazy option on everything- so use ai if necessary but not for every aspect of anything that requires us to actually, shock horror, problem solve!!!