When screenwriters confront "AI screenwriters": has the impact happened? Where will change occur?

Original source: East-West Entertainment

Image source: Generated by Unbounded AI

Last October, ChatGPT was released, which quickly caused global thinking about AI replacing human creative work. Hollywood also has creative people such as screenwriters and directors as the main force to initiate discussions.

In March this year, the domestic Baidu Wenxin and Ali Tongyi big model were released, and subsequently, a number of film and television companies claimed to be studying the combination of AI-generated content and business.

Among them, this naturally includes the script link of the source of the story.

iQiyi, Tencent Video, Youku, etc. have mentioned on different occasions that they will strengthen the layout of the AI film and television industry, including the idea of AI screenwriting.

A few days ago, the "film and television script intelligent creation system" self-developed by Huace Film and Television AIGC Application Research Institute for the company's business team was announced.

The discussion spread further in the entertainment industry. In this context, East-West Entertainment surveyed some screenwriters, and based on the continuous research and tracking of East-West Entertainment, some views on the possible impact were sorted out, and our views are shown in Part III.

**This article thanks a number of professional screenwriters in the fields of dramas, movies, short dramas, games and other fields for their research, as well as the research support given by companies and platforms such as Huace Film and Television, Haima Light Sail, and List Technology, in no particular order. **

** The advantages are obvious, the disadvantages are also, some agree, some doubt**

The writers who use a positive attitude have used ChatGPT to simulate dialogue or use Claude to assist in the construction of the story line in their daily work.

ChatGPT and Claude

They believe that AI can provide new perspectives on their ideas and provide valuable suggestions on some details.

Overall, when it comes to the impact of AI on creation, the views of many screenwriters who have used related experiences are reflected in the following two points:

AI can assist in the early stage of creative divergence, provide more possibilities and creative direction, and help writers quickly screen and identify the most promising storylines.

AI can solve some daily productivity problems, such as automating repetitive tasks and finding similar storylines or background information.

For screenwriters who use AI tools conservatively, the focus is on the irreplaceability of creation.

They believe that true creativity and depth of thought, emotional concentration, cannot be replicated by machines, and that AI may lead to the patterning of creation, loss of originality and distance from the complexity of human nature.

"At this stage, the output of AIGC scripts has no aura, because the creator's creative experience is very private, and good works must come from the author's own personal experience or in-depth understanding, while AIGC's creation lacks the real sense of life." Some screenwriters said.

Yu Gang, founder of Time Matrix and science fiction director, said that it is not feasible to use AI to join screenwriting creation for the time being, "AI can only help you collect data now, but the core content creation is simply impossible to complete." ”

Some film and television screenwriters said that due to the requirements for content quality, the use of AIGC in the existing production process is not considered for the time being.

A screenwriter with relatively rich experience in the use of AI told East-West Entertainment that the ability to learn and integrate is the advantage of generative AI.

If AIGC tools are used as a source of ideas or search tools, their convenience can even outperform most data platforms. But it is true that the disadvantage of AIGC tools is the lack of perception, which is precisely where the human imagination bursts.

"Senior screenwriters who have not grown up in the native environment of the Internet are naturally less willing to accept AI, but the new generation of screenwriters, whose behavior habits are inseparable from the Internet, are more willing to pay for Internet products." Higher acceptance of new things. Liu Xiaoyi, founder of Haima Light Sail, said.

She said that after ChatGPT became popular, it brought a small peak to their business. "ChatGPT is so hot, people come to consult, try it, and think about whether it is an epoch-making change."

According to official information, Haima Light Sail was founded in November 2016, the first to use NLP technology to develop narrative literary works, is the first domestic entertainment technology company to apply artificial intelligence technology to quantitatively study the law of content creation, self-developed AI algorithm technology can serve content forms including novel texts, film and television scripts, short video scripts and so on. In 2021, Haima Light Sail launched an intelligent writing tool that includes core functions such as intelligent script format adjustment, script scene character data coordination, novel to script, and material recommendation.

Haima Light Sail AI intelligent writing interface

Haima Qingfan said that most of the users of smart writing tools are young creators, and more than 1.3 million users have been accumulated.

Liu Xiaoyi said that as one of the earliest AI screenwriting products in China, from user feedback, the core functions of Haima Light Sail intelligent writing tool include four points:

The first is in the conception of the storyline, the AI will recommend many bridges for the screenwriter to choose; Second, the convenience of the entire screenwriter's mode, the script is a dynamic situation when consulted, which is very easy to find, for example, when you need to look at a script from the perspective of the characters, then the machine pulls out all the character lines in the script, and if you want to find which plot will also highlight you. The third is that you can evaluate while writing, and you can evaluate and compare it immediately after writing, and you can improve the revision of the script at any time. The fourth is to adapt to the current wave of micro-short dramas, and launch the function of turning novels into scripts, which converts cool texts into short drama scripts with one click, which most directly reflects the changes brought by AIGC to screenwriters.

Different from Haima Light Sail, which starts from script evaluation and writing, List Technology launches the "AI Screenwriting" module from the perspective of "video AIGC workflow".

Glance Technology will provide multiple creative and plot choices in a shorter period of time, which is regarded as a key function of the AI screenwriting module.

At a glance, the AI screenwriter interface of the technology operation treasure

Luo Jiangchun, founder of Insight Technology, said that because directors and producers often need to choose between multiple ideas and plots, it turns out that screenwriters may rack their brains to write 3 to 5 plots a day, and with the assistance of AI, the plots that can be written in a day can be multiplied. To a certain extent, it relieves the pressure of screenwriting work.

As for whether the application of tools will bring about the so-called problem of screenwriter unemployment, Liu Xiaoyi believes that the intelligence of the script link is allowing the source of the story to have a better level of story generation, and to some extent provides more opportunities for people who want to enter this field. She feels that good screenwriters are still worth a lot of money, and they will become more and more valuable.

"What it can bring you is an improvement in creative efficiency, not to replace you, the better a screenwriter, the less afraid of being replaced, but will actively embrace technological trends."

**Not only film and television, application demand is also short videos, script killing, games, interactive content... **

Jumping out of the category of film and television screenwriters, combined with AI narrative, AI screenwriters also have more category track choices.

Liu Xiaoyi said that the fields involved in Haima Light Sail also include the creation of short videos, script killing, and novels. From the data, the new users such as short videos and script killing are relatively obvious.

At the end of 2022, Wen Xin Big Model cooperated with the head script killing platform Little Black Detective to carry out the script killing character AI drawing competition, with the former providing AI drawing technical support, the latter serving as the circle publicity and promotion, and the script killing studio Qingyin Gate providing script killing IP support.

Immersive script killing scene generation based on Wen Xin ERNIE-VLEG model

According to the external expression, multi-party linkage can assist text creation through visual content, use exquisite picture materials to attract script killing players to continue to consume, and create new product forms such as "full-picture script killing". For the creation of text content itself, the assistance of visual content is often needed to inspire creative inspiration, improve creative efficiency, and shorten the creation cycle.

At the end of 2022, screenwriter Xiao Yu (pseudonym) began to use models such as ChatGPT to assist in script creation.

As a young screenwriter in the film and television industry and a blockbuster virtual human short screenwriter, the particularity of Xiao Yu's work makes him more sensitive to the use of new technologies.

He admits that while most screenwriters still have reservations. However, driven by the big environmental impact and application, he also felt that many screenwriters and creators began to embrace new technologies. The demand for applied AIGC screenwriting has been stimulated.

His company, which has recently become one of many AIGC applications, has proposed plans for AIGC virtual humans.

The direction of interactive storytelling is ushering in new opportunities under the iteration of AIGC tools.

The screenwriter with the direction of interactive content told East-West Entertainment, "Based on the premise experience before the interactive plot, we are trying to put a situation to the AI and let it guess the possibilities." Then AI will write a variety of common routine-type development possibilities on the Internet because of the collection of big data, and then we will select this as a kind of 'inspiration source database'. ”

Screenwriter Ann (not her real name) is currently working in the gaming space and began experimenting with ChatGPT in April this year. She gave ChatGPT a persona of a character and asked it to try to speak with that character.

"It's usually not straightforward, but the information GPT collects and the vocabulary it mentions inspires me."

An feels that compared with the screenwriter circle, the game circle is more open to the use of AI.

"There are those used to draw diagrams, some to write requirements, and there are people who do independent games and draw pictures with AI." She says using AI tools can help speed things up when creating light content. For example, some words and images in the creation of independent games are not high, and can be accelerated by AI; Large manufacturers can configure multiple AIs, and the manual only needs to be responsible for review and judgment.

** Film and television industry + content production with narrative form, technology and algorithm change**

The expectation of efficiency improvements brought by AI is driving platform parties and more film and television companies to explore new film and television production pipelines.

Today, with the progress of generative AI and large model application scenarios, the application of scripts has been integrated at the domestic model level. From the perspective of the domestic AIGC industry as a whole, Baidu Wenxin, Ali Tongyi Qianwen and other large models have been released one after another, and to a certain extent, they have shown the ability of screenwriters to create.

At the Baidu press conference in March this year, Wen Xin Yiyan put forward five suggestions for continuing after summarizing the content of "The Three-Body Problem"; Tongyi Qianwen has also shown corresponding ability after many tests.

Regarding some experimental projects observed recently, the relevant person in charge of the Digital Growth Center of Huace Film and Television Technology pointed out that although these projects may not be as artistic and ideological as human screenwriters, they have demonstrated the potential of artificial intelligence technology.

"The script is the script of a play, and it is the most important factor of production for film and television dramas. In the long run, AIGC will definitely be helpful for screenwriting, such as rapid generation of ideas, multi-angle stimulation and script evaluation. The above-mentioned people of Huace Film and Television said.

At the end of September, Huace Film and Television said that the "film and television script intelligent creation system" self-developed by its AIGC Application Research Institute has been launched, and this application is currently mainly used by the company's business team. The system is based on the vertical large model of the self-developed script and provides tools for "evaluation assistant" and "screenwriter assistant". Evaluation assistant to support extra-long Chinese. This has increased the evaluation content of the 200,000-word~500,000-word novel script from 3 days to 5 minutes now. The screenwriter assistant improves the inefficiency of multiple rounds of dialogue in the form of efficient workflows.

In the context of large manufacturers and film and television companies entering the market, the application of AI scripts is expected to accelerate, and the impact is also fermenting.

In the long run, generative AI will lower the threshold of creation and increase the supply of content, which will further highlight the scarcity of head content, thereby driving the long-term increase in the value of head content.

In addition to script writing, script dismantling and script evaluation involved in AI applications will also further help the development of the film and television industry.

According to information recently disclosed by iQiyi, the current accuracy rate of generative AI for dismantling script scenes and characters exceeds 90%. In addition, the use of large models to extract core information from the script can assist the script evaluation in the early stage of project initiation, and achieve more accurate budget planning and resource management.

As AI scripts find application scenarios in more diversified categories such as short videos and script killing, they are also showing a larger imagination in the narrative dimension.

In fact, from short stories, story generation has become more "automated".

A number of cases tracked by East-West Entertainment show that AI-generated short films and short dramas are constantly emerging from overseas to domestic. This has a profound impact on the ecology of story production and consumption.

In addition, as automation increasingly replaces human labor, future stories are likely to inevitably be influenced by more algorithmic generation factors, and viewers will be more willing to actively engage in interaction rather than passively wait for the narrator to tell him the story. This will open up new forms of content in the future. The impact may be profound and enormous.