Luckily, the panic surrounding the AI apocalypse is fading away, but it still triggers me when I read something on the “ChatGPT will replace X” timeline. It is amazing that this urgence to believe in AI pushes people to ignore the evidence which they themselves provide. This is a great example from The Guardian:
Ben Mankiewicz, a primetime host of Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and grandson of Herman Mankiewicz, who co-wrote the 1941 classic Citizen Kane, has just been experimenting with ChatGPT. “I signed up for a week and asked it to write a TCM introduction for Citizen Kane,” he says by phone from Los Angeles.
“It lacked some detail and context but it was pretty well written and thoughtful and certainly got the movie’s importance and mentioned Gregg Toland, the cinematographer. (It did not mention my grandfather – that was, of course, the real test!) It was very impressive and I thought right away if I had to write something about a movie, I might use that as a springboard.”
Ok, so… ChatGPT is amazing and will eat away the lunch of screenwriters in Hollywood and beyond because it was capable of summarizing a cult movie that has been discussed and reviewed online to death? Give me a break…