Editors Guild<\/a>, which represents about 100 unionized story analysts, he decided to find out. Earlier this year, he set up an experiment. He would ask AI tools to cover some scripts, then stack up their reports against coverage generated by humans. It was a test to see if he and his colleagues could compete.<\/p>\n\n\tSince the dawn of Hollywood, story analysts have been its threshing machines, separating the wheat from the chaff. AI proponents argue that algorithms can make that process more efficient, more objective and thus more fair, allowing new voices to be heard instead of relying on readers who bring their own subjective tastes to their job.<\/p>\n
\n\tBut something could also be lost. A human reader is the first to sense whether a script has potential, whether the characters are engaging and whether the story sweeps you up and has something new to say. Can AI do that?<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThe most important thing I\u2019m looking for is \u2018Do I care?’\u201d says Holly Sklar, a longtime story analyst at Warner Bros. \u201cAn LLM can\u2019t care.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tYet AI seems to be coming regardless. So rather than ignore it, some are trying to understand it. <\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cNobody wants to lose their job,\u201d says Alegre Rodriquez, an Editors Guild analyst who participated in Hallock\u2019s study. \u201cWe\u2019re not sticking our head in the ground pretending it doesn\u2019t exist, and we\u2019re not cowering waiting for them to give us a pink slip. I think people are dusting themselves off and saying, \u2018How do I stay in this game?’\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tKartik Hosanagar is a Wharton business professor and an internet marketing entrepreneur. He\u2019s also a film enthusiast with a couple scripts in his drawer \u2014 a drama about a startup and a thriller about a murdered Indian diplomat. As a Hollywood outsider, he struggled to sell his screenplays. That led him to develop an algorithm to level the playing field by assessing talent objectively. That venture didn\u2019t pan out, but the next one did: Hosanagar developed ScriptSense, now one of the buzzier AI script platforms. The pitch: \u201cEvaluate 100x the screenplays.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThere\u2019s a huge unread pile,\u201d Hosanagar says. \u201cThis is a great way to clear the pile and figure out where to focus your attention.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tIn March, Hosanagar sold his company to Cinelytic, a service provider that is integrating ScriptSense into a suite of management tools. \u201cIt\u2019s about saving time,\u201d says Tobias Queisser, the company\u2019s CEO. \u201cOpportunities get left aside because there\u2019s not enough capacity to look at all the stuff. Unknown writers never get a chance because their script is not submitted by a top agency.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tScriptSense provides summaries, character breakdowns, comps and casting suggestions. The tone is relatively neutral. It doesn\u2019t offer praise or criticism.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cOur design philosophy was that we\u2019re not going to make the decision for you,\u201d Hosanagar says. \u201cYou will never see a statement where it says \u2018Amazing!\u2019 or \u2018Reject it.’\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThe platforms geared toward screenwriters have a different philosophy. Jack Zhang, the founder of Greenlight, believes in the power of AI to make critical judgments. \u201cWhat AI really does well is being the average of things,\u201d he says. \u201cIn terms of feedback, you are trying to reach a wide audience. You want the average person to like your work. That\u2019s where AI really shines.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tScreenplayIQ offers qualitative assessments but not numerical scores. The program summarizes plots and evaluates characters\u2019 \u201cgrowth\u201d and \u201cdepth,\u201d helping writers see their work from an outside perspective. \u201cOur objective is to support writers where they feel they\u2019re struggling and want support,\u201d says developer Guy Goldstein. \u201cIt\u2019s holding a mirror up to your script. You wrote it with an intention; it\u2019s seeing if that intention came through.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tTo test the AI platforms, Hallock needed scripts. Screenwriters can be sensitive about feeding their material into AI models, as they assume it will be used for training. But a close friend was willing to provide some old screenplays for the cause. One was an unproduced script for the Syfy channel about a killer insect. Another was pitched as \u201c\u2018Heart of Darkness\u2019 in outer space.\u201d The author didn\u2019t mind if AI trained on that. <\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cHe said he hoped it would make the AI dumber,\u201d Hallock says.<\/p>\n
\n\tHe gathered a few others and gave them all to human analysts. He then compared their coverage with the loglines, synopses and notes produced by six AI platforms. The results were both encouraging and unnerving. <\/p>\n
\n\tThe AI-generated loglines were indistinguishable from the human ones \u2014 maybe even a little better. The differences began to show with the AI-generated synopses. \u201cThey tend to have 11th-grade-essay quality,\u201d Hallock says. \u201cIt uses the same kinds of constructions, like \u2018Our story begins with\u2026’\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThe more complicated the script, the more likely AI was to get things wrong \u2014 to misattribute the action of one character to another and to hallucinate plot points.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe humans won hands down when it came to notes, which require actual analysis rather than just distillation. The AI programs were \u201can almost total fail across the board,\u201d Hallock says.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe \u201c\u2018Heart of Darkness\u2019 in space\u201d script got a \u201crecommend\u201d though it had made the rounds in Hollywood 20 years ago and didn\u2019t sell. That was a consistent issue. Instead of offering unvarnished criticism, Rodriquez says, the models were \u201cbiased towards the writer.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThey would definitely tell you everything that was positive and working well,\u201d she says. \u201cBut when you had to get down to problems, they couldn\u2019t necessarily identify them.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tIn some cases, AI programs weren\u2019t evaluating; they were cheerleading.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s got that puppy-dog quality,\u201d Hallock says. \u201cIt wants to please you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tOne romantic comedy was praised by AI as \u201ca compelling, well-crafted coming-of-age story balancing humor, heartbreak, and bittersweet realities of navigating one\u2019s thirties. Strong character development makes this a standout work.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThe human reader, meanwhile, was underwhelmed: \u201cFamiliar template of female friends in Las Vegas. Potential as light streaming content, especially with Sydney Sweeney. Bawdy language, but jokes don\u2019t land hard; lacks bite of \u2018Girls Trip\u2019 or \u2018Bridesmaids.’\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tZhang defends Greenlight\u2019s taste, saying that only 5% of the scripts submitted to the platform get a \u201crecommend.\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s very few,\u201d he says. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t say there\u2019s huge inflation.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tHosanagar says ScriptSense doesn\u2019t make recommendations in part because AI can be too sycophantic. \u201cCan AI get to a point where it can be truly critical?\u201d he asks. \u201cI think it can get there. We\u2019re not there yet.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tMany of the analysts were heartened by the study, Rodriquez says. AI might be faster, but it can\u2019t pluck something original and brilliant out of the pile.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s still going to require a human being to look at those reports and review material,\u201d she says. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t save as much time as they think it does.\u201d <\/p>\n
\n\tAnd those who over-rely on it might miss out on something great. But the study was not entirely reassuring, concluding, \u201cStudios may be tempted to forgo quality and accuracy in favor of cheap and fast.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThe makers of the AI models say those fears are misplaced. \u201cIt\u2019s not about taking away jobs,\u201d Queisser says. \u201cWe see it as an enhancement for humans.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tChris Giliberti, CEO of Avail, says story analysts are already using his AI platform to do routine tasks, which frees up time to undertake more challenging analytical work. \u201cIt\u2019s unstoppable,\u201d he says. \u201cThe cat\u2019s out of the bag. This is making people\u2019s jobs and lives easier.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tSklar, however, worries about where this is headed. Today\u2019s executives value human input. But a younger generation may be coming up that is more comfortable with AI summaries. She fears that some in Hollywood \u2014 \u201cthe cost-slashing folks who don\u2019t understand all of what we do\u201d \u2014 will come view her role as superfluous. <\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThat\u2019s what keeps me up at night,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Morris Chapdelaine always has a daunting stack of scripts on his desk. As an indie producer, he reads…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":225029,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,126277,126278,126279,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-225028","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-editors-guild","12":"tag-greenlight-coverage","13":"tag-scriptsense","14":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225028\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}