ChatGPT: Co-Writer or Career Killer? A Screenwriter’s Guide to AI

Recently, I uploaded a feature outline I’d been puzzling over to ChatGPT and asked it to generate a logline, synopsis, and breakdown of the themes. Not only did it come up with a much better logline than I had done, but it did a pretty good job with the synopsis and with articulating the themes. It took my vague, fractured outline and transformed it into a coherent story that sounded professional and bankable. It did in thirty seconds what I had been trying to do for days. “What black magic is this?” I thought.

IS AI SCREENWRITING MAGIC?

If you ask ChatGPT how to change a tire, it will search the internet, scan several articles and videos, synthesize the results, and present its findings. You could do all of this yourself. Granted, ChatGPT can do it several thousands of times faster, which makes it seem like magic. But speed isn’t everything. What many people forget is that these large language models (LLMs)  like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude are still learning. They make mistakes; sometimes glaring ones. They also struggle heavily with originality. If you ask AI to write you a dramatic scene between two characters, it will fall back on its training data of thousands of similar scenes to understand how to produce what you want.

It’s derivative by design. This lack of originality is the dam in the flood of fears relating to AI replacing writers. As long as we flesh and blood writers can creatively outperform the machines, our jobs will be safe (for now). But, that doesn't mean that our jobs won’t change. Because as I discovered, there are aspects of story development where AI is capable of some incredible results, and it’s already led to a tidal shift in the business and development side.

CAN AI REPLACE DEVELOPMENT EXECUTIVES?

These LLMs excel at pattern recognition and extrapolating order from chaos. Naturally, executives will want to make use of them if there’s a chance they can save precious time getting through a mountain of unread scripts. The most obvious application of this is in AI script coverage. ChatGPT or Claude can read a script and provide a basic summary, but there are also services like Greenlight Coverage, which promises “quality script analysis in minutes.” I haven’t used any of these AI coverage services, but I am highly suspicious about the “quality” portion of that claim. People make careers out of detailed and insightful development notes. One of my first blog posts on this site was about how to give great notes, as it’s a delicate and nuanced process. So I just can’t believe that AI can yet deliver on this front. Though I won’t say that I’m not curious. Maybe I’ll do a deep dive into these companies for a future post with a clickbaity title like: “I Submitted My Script to Five AI Coverage Services. The Results Will SHOCK You!”

HOW SCARED SHOULD YOU BE?

It remains to be seen exactly how AI will fit into the writing side of the film business. Ask a room full of writers and you’ll get responses ranging from Terminator levels of doom prophesying to praising AI as the savior of screenwriters everywhere. I’m somewhere in the middle of these two camps.  I think the fears are overblown, and the usefulness of AI in screenwriting is overestimated. It’s a tool. A damn nifty one at times, but a tool nonetheless. It needs careful stewardship and thoughtful application. Now, are we capable of treading into this territory cautiously? A few thousand years of human history would tell us that no, no we are not. But, I’m still optimistic. Even a quick glance at the news tells me that seemingly the entire world is on the job of developing and fine-tuning AI at the moment, so I’ll place my faith in the collective efforts of our best and brightest to create something that’s, at best, revolutionary, and at worst, doesn’t destroy us all.

WHAT MIGHT THE FUTURE OF AI IN WRITING BE?

When the word processor was invented in the mid 80’s, it was resisted by many typewriter-touting authors of the day. Just 30 years later, typewriters are now only occasionally used according to preference. The word processor’s usefulness won out. That’s the kind of future I imagine for AI. In a few years, I’m guessing writers will be hard-pressed to find screenwriting software that doesn't have at least rudimentary AI integration. I say “bring it on.” As writers, we have to overcome our busy schedules, industry gatekeepers, writer’s block, and a thousand other things. We should be open to any tools that make our lives easier to live and our writing easier to read. Just don’t expect me to credit ChatGPT as a co-writer anytime soon.