As Hollywood reckons with the encroachment of generative AI in the filmmaking process – from artificial intelligence “actress” Tilly Norwood to the launch of AI-powered platform Showrunner – factions have emerged dividing creators, writers, directors and producers firmly into pro and con camps. Vince Gilligan, the multi-award-winning creator behind Apple TV’s newest hit Pluribus, is firmly in the latter group, expanding to Deadline on his previous comments about his distaste for AI and its “detriment” to human creativity, what he views as the most crucial way people can assert their agency.
“I do not care for AI,” he began in an interview tied to the release of Pluribus, the credits of which include a disclaimer about the series being entirely human-made, “but I’ll try to be magnanimous and say that anytime a new technology is created, I have to believe that the central impetus of it is indeed to make the world a better place. it’s just that, as this technology progresses, I don’t see how it will make the world a better place, but maybe it will, as I’m wrong more than I’m right. It depends on what the heck you’re creating a technology for, but more and more, it just seems to be clear, either explicitly or implicitly, that this technology is being designed to take work away, creativity away, creative endeavor away from human beings.”
Indeed, many tech CEOs have been openly hostile toward workers’ rights and nonchalant about their AI products’ potential impact on the already suffering job market. Edward Saatchi, CEO of the Amazon-backed Fable, which bills itself as the “Netflix of AI,” has signaled that he sees the tech as “possibly the end of human creativity” – a statement he does not view as alarming. Meanwhile, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has floated the idea that any jobs curtailed or entirely eliminated by AI may not have even constituted “real work” to begin with.
Gilligan said of his disconcertment with the technology: “When your selling point is: ‘This thing is great, it’ll write your high school essays for you, it’ll create your artwork for you if you’re an artist, so you don’t have to actually learn how to draw and paint anymore … You don’t ever need to learn how to read a map or use a compass … this thing will wipe your butt for you.’ What’s left to live for? The creative spark in human beings – it’s one of the most precious,fantastic things we have. What is more important than being creative?”
The Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul creator noted that “everybody is a storyteller,” not just those “l