I write feature films. For better or worse, I’ve never used a chatbot of any kind, and I, like most creative professionals, detest A.I. Or at least that’s what we’re all projecting.

Last year, I had one of the hottest production companies in town attached to an original script of mine. It was a big shot on goal for me, but after months of unpaid work, the project fell apart. Shortly afterward, the executive I had been working with quietly confessed that he did not believe there would be a film business in a few years. He was “happy to cash in whatever checks I could before we’re all replaced by A.I.”

In my general meetings this year, there is often a moment when the lights seem to dim, and the executives explain that their company only has development money to spend on films that can be A.I.-enhanced in some way. They tend to pitch their voices higher when they say this, like they’re going to play it off as a joke if I have a negative reaction. 

On the writer’s side of the table, plenty of us would rather quietly embrace A.I. than get left in the dust. Everyone feels some sense of existential dread, and we’re all trying to find stable footing as the business shrinks around us. These last few years have been the hardest ever to sustain a screenwriting career, let alone start one. After we’ve endured a pandemic, union strikes, and corporate consolidation, if the only way to get a significant paycheck is to work on an A.I.-supported project, it will become much harder for us to stick to our morals. The one thing that seems to be keeping creatives in check is the fear of being publicly condemned by peers. Personally, I believe embracing A.I., even as a tool, will inevitably make me a worse writer, but I realize saying that to a potential buyer sounds a bit like insisting, “Netflix is no match for a good old-fashioned Blockbuster.”

A techie friend of mine finds it surprising that I’m not more optimistic about A.I., given that I no longer need to rely on other people to create “art.” This is one of the biggest misunderstandings made by people who push A.I. on creatives. The goal of filmmaking has never been to involve as few people as possible. Ideally, you want a village of specialists whose collaborative efforts culminate in something magical. 

It’s passion for this process that drove two very young directors to make independent movies — Obsession and Backrooms — that, as I write this sentence, are defeating large-budget studio franchises at the box office. No algorithm would have predicted that, and, as a result, this is the first time in a while that the buzz around town has felt hopeful. Sure, Hollywood doesn’t exactly have a great track record of learning the right lessons from successes, but that doesn’t mean it can’t.