DeepMind created an AI tool that can help generate rough film and stage scripts<p>Have you ever thought up an idea for a movie or play that you just know will be a smash hit, but haven't gotten around to writing the script? Alphabet's DeepMind has built an AI tool that can help get you started.
Dramatron is a so-called "co-writing" tool that can generate character descriptions, plot points, location descriptions and dialogue. The idea is that human writers will be able to compile, edit and rewrite what Dramatron comes up with into a proper script. Think of it like
ChatGPT, but with output that you can edit into a blockbuster movie script.</p><p>To get started, you'll need
an OpenAI API key and, if you want to reduce the risk of Dramatron outputting "offensive text," a
Perspective API key. To test out Dramatron, I fed in the log line for a movie idea I had when I was around 15 that
definitely would have been a hit if
Kick-Ass didn't beat me to the punch. Dramatron quickly whipped up a title that made sense, and character, scene and setting descriptions. The dialogue that the AI generated was logical but trite and on the nose. Otherwise, it was almost as if Dramatron pulled the descriptions straight out of my head, including one for a scene that I didn't touch on in the log line.</p><span id="end-legacy-contents"></span><p>Playwrights seemed to agree, according to
a paper that the team behind Dramatron
presented today. To test the tool, the researchers brought in 15 playwrights and screenwriters to co-write scripts. According to the paper, playwrights said they wouldn't use the tool to craft a complete play and found that the AI's output can be formulaic. However, they suggested Dramatron would be useful for world building or to help them explore other approaches in terms of changing plot elements or characters. They noted that the AI could be handy for "creative idea generation" too.</p><div id="5e200aebdc6f47f18378153fcdfe16e3"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">✏️ We interviewed 15 industry experts including playwrights, screenwriters and actors who produced work using Dramatron.
Canadian company
@TheatreSports edited co-written theatre scripts and performed them on stage in Plays By Bots to positive reviews.
https://t.co/FlGzIdCuqXpic.twitter.com/6gqnB8e1L9</p>— DeepMind (@DeepMind)
December 9, 2022</div><p>That said, a playwright
staged four plays that used "heavily edited and rewritten scripts" they wrote with the help of Dramatron. DeepMind
said that in the performance, experienced actors with improv skills "gave meaning to Dramatron scripts through acting and interpretation."</p><p>Use of the AI tool may raise
questions about authorship and who (or what) should get the credit for a script. Last year, a UK appeals court ruled that artificial intelligence
can’t be legally credited as an inventor on a patent. DeepMind notes that Dramatron can output fragments of text that were used to train the language model, which, if used in a script that was produced, could lead to accusations of plagiarism. "One possible mitigation is for the human co-writer to search for substrings from outputs to help to identify plagiarism," DeepMind said.</p><div id="cfd8e64ed93642089f2b0731ad0b63e3"><div style="left:0;width:100%;height:0;position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;"><iframe src="
https://www.youtube.com/embed/i2WEEZ03Nu0?rel=0" style="top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;position:absolute;border:0;" allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no"></iframe></div></div><p></p>
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DeepMind created an AI tool that can help generate rough film and stage scripts
