Succession writer: āIām pretty worriedā about A.I.
Lucy Prebble says A.I. presents a threat to screenwriters and is already being used
Acclaimed British playwright and screenwriter Lucy Prebble says sheās āpretty worriedā about entertainment companies using A.I. to replace the work of writers. Speaking to the Ā鶹Éēās HARDtalk programme, Prebble said: āI do think it is worryingā¦It is a cost saving exercise and I do believe they are already doing things like cutting trailers quietly with A.I.ā
Prebble, whose writing credits include Succession and I Hate Suzie on television, and Enron and A Very Expensive Poison in the theatre, told Stephen Sackur that A.I. presents big copyright issues. She said she had experimented with basic A.I. by asking it to āwrite in the style of Lucy Prebbleā. āYou recognise what itās drawing fromā she said. āIt isnāt necessarily of a high qualityā¦but Iām reading them and Iām thinking āok so you are drawing on material thatās available from meā so thereās a copyright issue there thatās rarely discussedā.
Most concerning, warned Prebble, is that āit may not be sophisticated yet but it will be one day. Really sophisticatedā.
The Writers Guild of America ā which represents 11,500 screenwriters ā has been on strike since May this year, over an ongoing labour dispute with the studios and streamers. The strike is in part over concern about the use of A.I.
But the multiple award-winning Prebble, whose play The Effect is currently running at the National Theatre in London, is optimistic that audiences will be able to tell a difference between work created by humans versus A.I. āThereās something about art that means that human beings are more affected the more effort they know has gone in to somethingā she said. āIf A.I. was generating content in the way that they wanted it to, it would actually be less emotionally valuable to people. As long as they knew A.I. was creating itā. And she said that āstudios and streamers donāt realiseā¦.that audiences will respondā differently.