Charlie Brooker’s science fiction drama series Black Mirror concerns the downfall of humankind as they progress their relationship with technology even further. With the sixth season of the show around the corner, Brooker has been thinking about the recent rise of Artificial Intelligence technologies.
In fact, Brooker asked the infamous AI programme ChatGPT to write an episode of Black Mirror, but he was less than impressed with the final result. He recently discussed AI and the new series in an interview with Empire.
“I’ve toyed around with ChatGPT a bit,” Brooker said. “The first thing I did was type ‘generate Black Mirror episode’, and it comes up with something that, at first glance, reads plausibly, but on second glance, is shit.”
He continued, “Because all it’s done is look up all the synopses of Black Mirror episodes and sort of mush them together. Then if you dig a bit more deeply, you go, ‘Oh, there’s not actually any real original thought here.’ It’s [1970s impressionist] Mike Yarwood — there’s a topical reference.”
Brooker has been keen to reinvent the series and not rely on its previous tropes. He continued, “I was aware that I had written lots of episodes where someone goes, ‘Oh, I was inside a computer the whole time!’. So I thought, ‘I’m just going to chuck out any sense of what I think a Black Mirror episode is.’
Brooker added, “There’s no point in having an anthology show if you can’t break your own rules,” he added. “Just a sort of nice, cold glass of water in the face.”
Check out the trailer for Black Mirror season six below.
