A cinema in London has canceled the world premiere of a film with an AI-generated script after a backlash.
The Prince Charles Theatre, located in London’s West End and which traditionally screens cult and art films, was due to host a screening of a new production called The Last Screenwriter on Sunday. However the cinema announced on social media that the show would not go on.
In his statement, Prince Charles said: “The feedback we received over the last 24 hours after we advertised the film highlighted the strong concerns many of us heard about using AI in place of a writer what about a wider issue within the industry.”
Directed by Peter Luisi and starring Nicholas Pople, The Last Screenwriter is a Swiss production which describes itself as the story of “a celebrated screenwriter” who “finds his world rocked when he encounters a cutting-edge AI screenwriting system … he soon realizes that AI not only matches his skills, but even surpasses him in empathy and understanding of human emotions”. The script is credited to “ChatGPT 4.0”.
Luisi told the Daily Beast that the cinema had canceled the screening after receiving 200 complaints, but that a private screening for cast and crew would still take place in London.
He added: “I think people don’t know enough about the project. All they hear is ‘first film entirely written by AI’ and they immediately see the enemy, and their anger goes to us… If screenwriters take the time to watch the movie and read about the process and why we did this film, can I’ I can’t imagine they will condemn us or me because I am one of them… I want to do this as a contribution to the cause.”
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The use of AI in the film industry remains a live issue. One of the key demands of last year’s Hollywood writers’ strike was formal protection over the integration of AI tools into the writing process, which led to an agreement that while AI can be used to generate text drafts, authors will always get credit for their work. The issue of performance cloning was highlighted by Scarlett Johansson’s complaint about ChatGPT’s use of a voice replica of her, which the AI company quickly dropped.
