Column: After a long day, the last thing I want is to tell artificial intelligence to create a TV show for me to watch

A startup recently profiled by Variety is promising an artificial intelligence tool that will allow the average viewer to type in a few keywords and generate new episodes of a TV show either from scratch or “based on an existing story-world someone else has created.” After a long day, I have to do more work just to have something to watch?

It won’t be the only company to offer this kind of AI, but the service will apparently be free before eventually switching to a monthly subscription in the $10-$20 range. Users will also be able to share these “new” shows on video platforms like YouTube.

This sounds like a corrupted version of fan fiction, except instead of coming from the heart (and brain) of a devoted viewer, it’s just computer-generated content — and this really is one instance when “content” seems appropriate — that can only exist because it scraped and reassembled pre-existing human creativity.

Will people be allowed to monetize content that’s really just a soulless, artificial version of pre-existing shows?

Artificial intelligence is fundamentally vampiric by nature, as IndieWire film critic David Ehrlich points out. “It doesn’t streamline or emphasize human creativity so much as it insists that we’ve had enough of that already, and the algorithms can take it from here.”

It’s strange that most high-profile Hollywood stars aren’t speaking out about the threat this poses to the future of their industry. In fact, some are going all in and looking to profit from it. “Black Swan” and “The Whale” filmmaker Darren Aronofsky, who has his own AI ventures, is just one. Sylvester Stallone, who recently invested in a TV and film AI company, is another. There are so many more, including Marvel directors Joe and Anthony Russo, who said they plan to invest $400 million in the technology.

But not everyone is on board.

Northwestern University professor Felicia D. Henderson is the creator of Showtime’s TV adaptation of “Soul Food,” and her credits also include shows such as Fox’s “Empire” and Netflix’s “The Punisher” series. She is currently taking a break from teaching to be an executive producer on the BET+ comedy “Diarra From Detroit.” Here’s what she had to say:

“As a screenwriter who, based on what I have learned about storytelling — as a director who interacts with performers who have learned their craft; as a professor who teaches students the craft of writing; and as a person who knows AI is an amalgamation of work that has already been produced — I find it astoundingly ridiculous.”

Scott Myers is another screenwriter who is unconvinced of AI’s need or capabilities. His credits include the 1989 Jim Belushi comedy “K-9” and the 1996 wilderness movie “Alaska.” He is a screenwriting professor at DePaul University and is also the author of “The Protagonist’s Journey: An Introduction to Character-Driven Screenwriting and Storytelling.”

“Every movie I’ve written, every TV episode I have written — plus my book — have all been scraped by AI,” he said. “That’s offensive in and of itself, that they would take that material without permission and feel free to use it however they want.”

Myers knows some writers use AI for “story development or concept development or research, but what we say at DePaul is, once you type ‘fade in,’ that’s it. That’s our screenwriting department’s policy. But if you want to use it for some of these pre-writing processes, that’s OK.”

Why is it OK? “Because they’re going to use it. It’s like the atom bomb.”

Is that a capitulation?

“I think so,” Myers said. “But I find that most of my students don’t use it, and I’ll tell you why. In the very first class, I say: The one thing you have that nobody else has is your distinct life experience. And what we are going to do as teachers is help you develop that into a creative voice. And if you’re using AI instead, you’re not going to benefit from that and you’re wasting your time trying to become a screenwriter. The thing (Hollywood) looks for is a distinctive, unique personality that comes out on the page through things like your choice of characters and stories, scene description, dialogue — all of that is fundamentally inside you. We can help you develop that. AI is going to diminish that.

“And when I make that big, preachy statement, I think they take it to heart. It speaks to them personally: ‘Oh, I have this unique thing and hopefully that will set me apart from other writers.’”

Myers said he watched a sample from the aforementioned AI startup. “It’s terrible. It’s not entertaining, it’s not funny.” By the way, one of the characters is an AI-generated Jesus. Who could have predicted an AI version of Jesus wouldn’t be terrible?!

As a viewer, I’m always asking a show or movie: What is it you want to say? Are you saying anything at all? Because if you’re not, why am I watching? It could be saying something as simple as: Let’s have a good time and be silly. But it needs to be saying something. Whereas AI is just reassembling things that other people have already said.

“I spend a lot of time on theme with my students because when your writing starts to fail you or you think that you’re stuck,” Henderson said,  “you can always go back and ask yourself: What is it that I was trying to say? And theme has to be very specific to the way you experience — or you want an audience to experience — the world.”

She brought up another point: A writer may create a character who is “absolutely bad to the bone,” as she put it. But no matter how unfettered or odious a character’s choices may be, when the writing is good, there’s an intentionality behind it. A purpose. Think about all the choices Ryan Coogler makes in a movie like “Sinners” and ask yourself if you would trust AI with those characters and that story.

“I would never trust AI with any characters who are bigoted or cruel because AI only exists to spit out content based on certain prompts. It has no point of view. It can only regurgitate. “There’s no media literacy from AI,” said Henderson.

The job of a screenwriter, she added, “is not to judge a character, your job is to make an audience understand who they are and how they became that person. None of that can be done in AI. It’s why AI doesn’t do well stringing together multiple episodes because it can’t arc out a story and create a trajectory for a character who is one way at the beginning and another way at the end.”

Movies and TV shows delight us, said Myers, for reasons we may not always be conscious of in the moment. “Billy Wilder had this great quote where he said ‘Give the audience two plus two, and let them come up with four.’ That’s what skilled writers do, they’ll give the audience just enough to pique their curiosity and get their mind going, so you go, ‘Well, wait a minute, what does that mean?’ Skilled writers know how to lure the viewer into the story. That’s not passive, but a very active emotional experience.”

Myers quoted another Hollywood legend, MGM studio head Irving Thalberg. “He was meeting with writers and he was upset because they kept trying to give meaning to their scripts. And he said, ‘What is it with you writers? It’s just putting one word after the other.’ And one of the writers said, ‘No, Mr. Thalberg. It’s putting one right word after the other.’”

After we spoke, Henderson sent a follow-up email.

“I think there is something we should all be asking the world,” she said. “What do we do with all the real content creators we discard when we embrace the creative mediocrity of AI? Zora Neale Hurston said ‘There is no agony like the pain of a story untold.’ (Or something like that). AI has no soul, therefore no agony. And it is from that agony that stories should be told. But in a generation, they will not know the difference.”

Nina Metz is a Tribune critic.