Netflix’s ‘Black Mirror’ show creator admits ‘toying’ with ChatGPT to write episodes

Charlie Brooker was seemingly unimpressed with artificial intelligence as he tested it to write an episode of Netflix’s series, Black Mirror.

In an interview with Empire Magazine, show creator divulged his experience road-testing the controversial artificial intelligence programme, ChatGPT, to write an episode of his hot sci-fi show.

“I’ve toyed around with ChatGPT a bit," Brooker told the outlet.

“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 sh-t. Because all it’s done is look up all the synopses of Black Mirror episodes, and sort of mush them together.”

The five-time Emmy-winning writer added, “Then 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.”

However, his foray into the experiment was not all bad as he did discover some interesting details. In fact, the chatbot seems to have underscored what Brooker should avoid doing in his show’s upcoming episodes.

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

“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.”

He then described it as “just a sort of nice, cold glass of water in the face.”

Black Mirror will return with its sixth season, which is slated to release this summer on Netflix.