‘Black Mirror’ Creator Asked Chat GPT To Write An Episode, Says Result Had No ‘Original Thought’

Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker revealed he asked an artificial intelligence chatbot to write an episode of the technological-dystopian themed anthology series.

Brooker told Empire the results produced by chat bot Chat GPT were lackluster.

“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 shit,” Brooker told the outlet, saying the chat bot simply “mushed up” all the synopses of Black Mirror episodes. “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.”

The series creator said Chat GPT’s rendition of a Black Mirror episode helped highlight some cliches of the series’ writing.

“I was aware that I had written lots of episodes where someone goes, ‘Oh, I was inside a computer the whole time!’” Brooker said. “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.”

A #BlackMirror episode written by the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT was total “sh*t,” says series creator Charlie Brooker: “Oh, there’s not actually any real original thought here.” https://t.co/UMNi3BTQ4D

— Variety (@Variety) June 6, 2023

Black Mirror’s 6th season is currently in post-production with an all-star cast including Aaron Paul of Breaking Bad, Annie Murphy, Josh Hartnett, Kate Mara, Michael Cera, and Salma Hayek Pinault, among others.

Brooker teased the plot of one episode titled “Beyond the Sea,” set in an alternative reality 1969, which the series creator described as a “sort of dystopian past, present and future.”

“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.”

Black Mirror‘s new season debuts on Netflix on June 15.