Taxi Driver writer Paul Schrader asked ChatGPT for film ideas — and he loved them
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The director mused: ‘Why should writers sit around for months searching for a good idea when AI can provide one in seconds?’. “Every idea chatgpt came up with (in a few seconds) was good. And original. And fleshed out. Why should writers sit around for months searching for a good idea when AI can provide one in seconds?”.
The post drew a shocked reaction from his followers on the platform, with several speculating whether the filmmaker had been hacked. Schrader has frequently posted about AI in the last few days. His previous post praised Spike Jonze’s 2013 movie Her, about a man who falls in love with an AI voice assistant. Schrader said he had recently rewatched the film and found it “even more relevant, prescient and deeply creepy than it was ten years ago. This film grows in stature. I liked it then, I love it now. There’s only one like it.”.
In another post, Schrader revealed he had sent ChatGPT an old script he had written “some years ago and asked for improvements.” He added that “in five seconds it responded with notes as good or better than I’ve ever received” from a “film executive.”.
In an earlier post, he said that he has “come to realize that AI is smarter than I am,” adding: “This is an existential moment, akin to what Kasparov felt in 1997 when he realized Deep Blue was going to beat him at chess.”. In November, actor Ben Affleck also made headlines for defending the use of AI, arguing that it would help some filmmakers.
“What AI is going to do is going to disintermediate the laborious, less creative and more costly aspects of filmmaking that will allow costs to be brought down, that will lower the barrier for entry, that will allow more voices to be heard, that will make it easier for the people that want to make ‘Good Will Huntings’ to go out and make it,” said Affleck.
