‘Black Mirror’ Creator Said He Had ChatGPT Write An Episode That Was ‘S***’: ‘Not Any

“Black Mirror” creator Charlie Brooker said he tried using the artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT to write an episode, and he wasn’t impressed.

The director told Empire magazine about his experiment with the popular new technology. “I’ve toyed around with ChatGPT a bit,” Brooker said. “The first thing I did was type ‘generate “Black Mirror” episode’ and it comes up with something that, at first glance, reads plausibly, but on second glance, is s***. Because all it’s done is look up all the synopses of ‘Black Mirror’ episodes, and sort of mush them together.”

He continued: “If you dig a bit more deeply you go, ‘Oh, there’s not actually any real original thought here.’ It’s [1970s impressionist] Mike Yarwood — there’s a topical reference.”

While the showrunner wasn’t impressed with the ideas ChatGPT came up with, he said it did help him uncover some flaws in his previous work.

“I was aware that I had written lots of episodes where someone goes, ‘Oh, I was inside a computer the whole time!’” Brooker told the outlet. “So I thought, ‘I’m just going to chuck out any sense of what I think a ‘Black Mirror’ episode is.’ There’s no point in having an anthology show if you can’t break your own rules. Just a sort of nice, cold glass of water in the face.”

“Black Mirror” is said to be a modern version of “The Twilight Zone.” The satirical, suspenseful dramas explore techno-paranoia, and each episode features individual stories and characters, which is what makes them impossible for a program like ChatGPT to replicate.

Brooker hinted about what’s to come in season 6, which debuts on Netflix on June 15. 

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“[It’s] sort of dystopian past, present and future,” the director said of the episode “Beyond the Sea,” which is set in 1969.

“I had the plot idea first and then, at one point, I thought what if I set this in the late ’60s? That’d be, like, disruptive and cool! And then when you actually come to write it, you realize, ‘Oh, hang on, if this is a different time and everyone in it is from that time, that actually informs how the characters are thinking and behaving.’ But I don’t think there was a deliberate rejection of nostalgia, so much as it was just a fun thing to do.”