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Succession writer: ā€œIā€™m 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 sheā€™s ā€œpretty worriedā€ about entertainment companies using A.I. to replace the work of writers. Speaking to the Ö÷²„“óŠćā€™s HARDtalk programme, Prebble said: ā€œI 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 ā€˜write in the style of Lucy Prebbleā€™. ā€œYou recognise what itā€™s drawing fromā€ she said. ā€œIt isnā€™t necessarily of a high qualityā€¦but Iā€™m reading them and Iā€™m thinking ā€˜ok so you are drawing on material thatā€™s available from meā€™ so thereā€™s a copyright issue there thatā€™s rarely discussedā€.

Most concerning, warned Prebble, is that ā€œit 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. ā€œThereā€™s something about art that means that human beings are more affected the more effort they know has gone in to somethingā€ she said. ā€œIf 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 ā€œstudios and streamers donā€™t realiseā€¦.that audiences will respondā€ differently.

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2 minutes