{"id":701007,"date":"2026-05-28T23:27:23","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T23:27:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/701007\/"},"modified":"2026-05-28T23:27:23","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T23:27:23","slug":"from-hacks-and-morning-wars-to-the-comeback-ai-is-the-villain-of-the-tv-screen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/701007\/","title":{"rendered":"From Hacks and Morning Wars to The Comeback, AI is the villain of the TV screen"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Recently, an Australian screenwriter received some \u201cnotes\u201d \u2013 the industry term for constructive criticism \u2013 about a script he\u2019d written. Immediately, he sensed something was off: the feedback was unusually generic. He suspected that artificial intelligence had been used, so he confronted the person who gave him the notes.<\/p>\n

Acclaimed local screenwriter and producer Jacquelin Perske<\/a>, who has knowledge of this conversation, says that person freely admitted to running the script through an AI program to make their job \u201cmore efficient\u201d. As they explained to the astonished writer: \u201cI look at the response [from AI] and go, \u2018Oh yeah, that\u2019s pretty much what I\u2019m feeling\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, AI has already muscled its way into Australian TV writing rooms, supplanting entry-level positions once performed by aspiring writers: taking notes in meetings, for instance, or summarising book chapters for a screen adaptation. Some veteran writers fear it\u2019s only a matter of time before major corporations try to \u201caugment\u201d or replace their labour with AI-generated content, too.<\/p>\n

In the United States and Britain, writers are fighting back by addressing AI, and the many quandaries it entails, in their TV series. Programs including Hacks, The Comeback, Abbott Elementary, Rooster, Morning Wars, The Capture and Paradise have all explored the potentially sinister consequences of this technology. Some are light-hearted comedies while others are political thrillers, but all make a villain of AI.<\/p>\n

\u201cHalf the stuff I watch on Netflix feels like it\u2019s written by AI because it\u2019s so samey.\u201d<\/p>\n

Screenwriter Louise Fox<\/p>\n

In Morning Wars<\/a>, the character Stella Bak (Greta Lee<\/a>) is a media conglomerate CEO who embraces AI to stay ahead of her rivals, only for her lookalike chatbot to go rogue and destroy her reputation during a critical presentation. In Hacks,<\/a> superstar comedian Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) is tempted by a lucrative offer from a tech bro, who wants to use her material and voice to train his AI program \u2013 until she realises there\u2019s no need \u201cto optimise the creative process \u2026 that\u2019s one of the things we\u2019ve figured out; we\u2019re good there\u201d. And the final season of The Comeback \u2013 starring Lisa Kudrow as Valerie Cherish, an actress in the first AI-written sitcom<\/a> \u2013 is devoted to the existential threat this technology poses to large swathes of Hollywood.<\/p>\n

Australian screenwriter Louise Fox<\/a> (Glitch, Love My Way, Round the Twist) believes that contemporary AI programs are good at scraping existing information, making them capable of imitation \u2013 but not innovation.<\/p>\n

\u201cStreaming services have been using algorithms to [try to replicate hit shows] for a long time now,\u201d Fox says. \u201cAnd frankly, I can feel it \u2013 half the stuff I watch on Netflix feels like it\u2019s written by AI because it\u2019s so samey. AI can\u2019t give us a Sopranos, Breaking Bad or DTF St Louis<\/a> because these shows innovate in so many ways.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"JasonJason Bateman (left) and David Harbour star in DTF St Louis, a groundbreaking dark comedy on HBO Max.HBO Max<\/p>\n

Perske \u2013 whose credits include The Tattooist of Auschwitz<\/a>, Love My Way and The Secret Life of Us \u2013 agrees. \u201cAI seems to be the bogeyman of the moment in TV because no one knows what it might mean for anyone,\u201d she says, adding that some composers are already feeling the pinch.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can create music based on something that\u2019s out of copyright, you don\u2019t have to pay anyone and bang \u2013 you\u2019ve got your soundtrack,\u201d says Perske, who doesn\u2019t use AI for writing but has experimented with some programs. \u201cI asked [an AI platform] to give me a treatment in the style of Jacquelin Perske and it understood what that means. It was pretty broad \u2013 it was about mature relationships and so on \u2013 but my work has clearly been scraped somewhere along the line because it\u2019s all on the internet, and I don\u2019t know how I feel about that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Related Article\"This<\/a><\/p>\n

Claire Pullen, executive director of the Australian Writers Guild, spoke to this masthead from Geneva, where she is discussing these issues at a copyright and intellectual property standing committee. Central to these debates is the fact that many AI companies feed entire books, newspaper articles, songs and videos into their \u201clarge language models\u201d \u2013 so named because they\u2019re designed to generate \u201chuman-like text\u201d \u2013 without permission or compensation from the people who created them. When I liken this to stealing books from a bookstore, Pullen takes the analogy further.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like taking a book without paying for it while robbing the worker before getting them sacked,\u201d she says. \u201cThe AI companies have this appalling, unfair advantage because they\u2019re stealing from the people they\u2019re trying to replace.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pullen doesn\u2019t buy the argument that an AI takeover of creative industries is inevitable.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s propaganda from big tech companies to say that this is happening, and to not bother enforcing Australian law for the benefit of Australians,\u201d she says. \u201cThese companies could remove some of the works [used without authorisation] if they wanted to.\u201d<\/p>\n

(The Hacks character Ava, played by Hannah Einbinder<\/a>, also rails against this sense of \u201cforced inevitability\u201d, telling the greedy tech bro: \u201cPeople like you are always saying it\u2019s going to happen whether you like it or not, but you are the one making it happen!\u201d )<\/p>\n

\"ClaireClaire Pullen, executive director of the Australian Writers Guild, rejects the argument that an AI takeover of creative industries is inevitable.<\/p>\n

Perske worries that AI will deny emerging writers the kind of invaluable experience she accumulated early in her career. Even when silently taking notes in a meeting, she\u2019d learn \u201chow a writers\u2019 room is run, how the politics work, how an idea gets built and comes to fruition \u2026 you meet writers and producers and that\u2019s how the human connection begins\u201d.<\/p>\n

Stuart Page (Total Control, Cleverman, Wentworth) says AI has the potential to revolutionise entire disciplines, from large-scale data analysis to medicine and engineering.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut why the f— are we talking about it to create art; to create the culture to tell us about ourselves?\u201d he says. \u201cThe whole AI debate is incredibly infuriating because it feels like a method of control to allow a small number of people to make a large profit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Page paraphrases a now-viral quote commonly attributed to author Joanna Maciejewska: \u201cI thought AI and machines would take over the gruelling repetitive tasks to free me up to write poetry and paint pictures,\u201d he says, \u201cbut f—ing AI is painting pictures and writing poetry and I\u2019m still doing my goddamn laundry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Fox wonders if audiences will grow weary of AI-generated content.<\/p>\n

\u201cHuman beings are absolute monsters for novelty,\u201d she says. \u201cAfter a while, we tire of the form and we look for something fresh \u2013 and I don\u2019t think that AI, at this point, is capable of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

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