Welcome to Hollywood AI, the weekly newsletter covering the latest AI developments in the entertainment industry.

• 💬 Black Mirror Creator Tries out ChatGPT

• 🎶 Beatles Make Comeback with AI

• 🍿 AI Kernels

“ChatGPT, write Black Mirror”

Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker was writing about AI before it hit the hype. So he figured why not try to use AI to write a Black Mirror episode?

Well, it turns out ChatGPT-written Black Mirror was “shit”.

As Empire’s Owen Williams says, “In much of Black Mirror, the problem turns out not to be the technology itself, but the use it’s put to by human beings.”

It’s a solid reminder to all writers that ChatGPT — lacking consciousness, emotions, or memories — just can’t understand what a human feels or thinks.

It has no sense of humor, no sense of irony, it doesn’t get sarcasm. Because it’s not a human. It’s a bunch of algorithms.

While Charlie Brooker isn’t worried about ChatGPT stealing his job, the writers’ strike in Hollywood is still going on — with AI a major issue.

My opinion? If you’re worried about AI taking your job as a writer, you need to spend more time experimenting with ChatGPT; you won’t be replaced by AI, but you may be replaced by a writer using AI better than you.

Beatles Make a Comeback (With AI)

Paul McCartney said he created one final Beatles song — featuring an AI version of John Lennon’s voice. It’ll be released later this year!

McCartney said he used AI to “extricate” Lennon’s voice from a demo cassette Lennon recorded shortly before he was killed in 1980. While McCartney has not revealed the name of the song, BBC reported that it’s likely a 1978 composition called Now and Then, one of several tracks on a cassette labeled “For Paul” that Lennon created before his death.

This Lennon track is coming at a weird time. There’s a war brewing in the music industry for and against AI.

With no major label, electronic artist Grimes is free to take matters into her own hands, offering to give any AI engineers/musicians 50% of the royalties if they make a track with an AI version of her. Meanwhile, many musicians and record labels are figuring out what to do with the thousands of engineers and musicians making deepfakes of their work. While we all love AI Drake bangers, I think most people agree he deserves to be compensated — and it’s not that simple when you’ve got many parties involved. It’s his voice after all.

But this upcoming Lennon track has a different vibe surrounding the announcement. There’s something quite beautiful about McCartney recreating John’s voice nearly 50 years later. Unlike AI Drake, it doesn’t feel like it’s about money or clickbait at all. Just a friend making music with an old friend.

AI Kernels

Here’s a round-up of interesting news and stories that caught our attention this week:

Use AI to make YouTube thumbnails! Whaaaaaat! Yes, you can now use an AI app called AlphaCTR to make personalized thumbnails → AlphaCTR

How to get coached by Quentin Tarantino or Christopher Nolan. I wrote a thread about how to get free screenwriting advice from AI versions of famous directors → Twitter

Godfather of the modern internet Marc Andreessen published a piece called Why AI Will Save The World. This guy legit invented the web browser. Worth a read → Substack

AI-Themed Content of the Week

Every week, we’ll hit you with a piece of content centered around AI. It might be a book, movie, whatever.

This week, we got something super-duper cool. A Twitter account called Artificial Luxury has been making AI fashion. She dropped a thread on what it’d be like if Apple did a collab with a luxury brand for the new Vision Pro.