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Artificial intelligence input into film script aims to shake up industry with Impossible Things

Kim Arlington

Artificial intelligence used to be something that featured in science fiction films. Now, it's writing the scripts.

Following the debut in June of Sunspring, a hilariously disjointed short film written entirely by AI, a feature-length movie has been written by AI – with human input – in an effort to nail the formula for box office success.

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Trailer: Impossible Things

Disturbed by the death of her young daughter, a career-driven mother and her out-of-work husband leave the city and move to an idyllic and secluded country home.

Funds are being raised to make Impossible Things on Kickstarter, where it is billed as "the first AI co-written feature film".

Jack Zhang, the 24-year-old Canadian mathematician and software architect behind the project, used AI to analyse reams of movie data and identify the plot combinations audiences like. The trailer incorporates key tropes of the horror genre: a secluded house; a dead child; something unspeakable in the bathtub.

Greenlight's Jack Zhang
Greenlight's Jack Zhang Photo: Jonathan Bielaski @jonbielaski

AI suggested about 20 plot points to form the story "but at the end of the day, we still need human creatives to validate AI's output to see if it makes sense", Mr Zhang told Fairfax Media.

"With a power tool like the AI software we created, human creatives can do their job better," he said. "The true advantage of AI is the ability to look at a massive amount of data and perform complex calculations to extract insights. Imagine writing a screenplay with perfect knowledge of thousands of screenplays, with their audience reaction in mind – that's what AI can do, but humans can't."

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David Tuffley, from Griffith University's School of Information and Communication Technology, said using AI to create films and TV shows could help meet the "insatiable demand for content nowadays".

"The technology isn't taking over but it is augmenting the way people do their jobs, it's giving them greater capabilities," Dr Tuffley said. "It isn't going to do away with people writing scripts – there's going to be as much of that going on as there ever was."

A still from the trailer for yet-to-be-made horror film Impossible Things, co-written by humans and artificial intelligence.
A still from the trailer for yet-to-be-made horror film Impossible Things, co-written by humans and artificial intelligence.  Photo: Aletia McKinnon/Greenlight Essentials

Associate Professor in the Faculty of IT at Monash University David Dowe said the project raised questions about what creativity means. "Why would it be the sole, exclusive domain of humans?" he said.

"I think we're going to see more and more human endeavours able to be done by machines and [the question is] how will this affect society, employment, underemployment?"

Illustration: Matt Golding.
Illustration: Matt Golding. 

Senior lecturer in film studies at the University of Sydney Bruce Isaacs said there were "incredibly subtle, idiosyncratic relationships between spectators and movies" and, aside from obvious branding like the Marvel Universe, no proven formula for success.

"I don't believe we are currently inhabiting a world where most audiences can be mapped to this kind of degree," Dr Isaacs said. "I don't think art works that way and I absolutely don't think culture works that way."

Dr Isaacs questioned whether Impossible Things would make a lasting impact on the industry. "Unless you get a major buy-in in terms of investment and ... spectators and people in the community, it has the potential to just be a novelty," he said. But if it succeeded, he said, "Hollywood would be on it in a split second."

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