AdvertisementSaveYou have reached your maximum number of saved items.Remove items from your saved list to add more.ShareAAAThere’s a secret shame circulating among Australian writers, and it’s making some of us feel a little dirty. The narrative tends to be that nobody touches AI, but this isn’t true. Several of my friends will privately admit to using it for research, spellchecks, identifying plot holes or even bouncing ideas around. I’ve asked it to summarise character arcs and plot developments, figuring that if a computer can accurately distil what I was going for, then I’ve probably done something right.Even this makes me uneasy, given the technology has literally been trained on all of our stolen work, but AI has become so ubiquitous it’s impossible to ignore and difficult to resist. At least no self-respecting author is asking it to write for them and passing the work off as their own. Right?The other day, an actor friend of mine sent me a screenplay he had written. Given this person is not a writer, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I read the script in one sitting, engaged and impressed. Afterwards, I called him to ask what his plan for it was. To turn it into a novel, he said. Given I work full-time as an author and screenwriter, I asked what he knew about writing novels, and the response came with matter-of-fact ease: “I’ll just chuck it in an AI.”Gabriel Bergmoser: “The inherent revulsion I’d assumed most creatives felt towards AI-assisted work was only ever an assumption.″⁣AI, it turned out, had already been used to redraft the screenplay and I had not recognised it. This shook me. Maybe more surprising was my realisation that the inherent revulsion I’d assumed most creatives felt towards AI-assisted work was only ever an assumption.Rhett Reese, one of the writers behind the Deadpool and Zombieland films, made news recently when he responded to a viral AI-generated video of Tom Cruise fighting Brad Pitt with a simple and depressing: “I hate to say it. I think it’s over for us.”AdvertisementIn response to the pushback, he tweeted: “In next-to-no-time, one person is going to be able to sit at a computer and create a movie indistinguishable from what Hollywood now releases. True, if that person is no good, it will suck. But if that person possesses Christopher Nolan’s talent and taste (and someone like that will rapidly come along), it will be tremendous.”He’s not the only one thinking this way. In February, acclaimed screenwriter (and Facebook firebrand) Paul Schrader, whose output includes Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, posted: “One year from now photorealistic AI dramas will be running through film school bodies like diuretics. Based on my brief AI experimentation a savvy student will be able to create a 90min narrative in 2-3 weeks. On zero budget. Without leaving home. Without anyone’s permission. The originality of the story would determine the value of the product. Why go through the agonies of fund-raising and collaboratorating (sic) when all you need is a keyboard?”While Schrader has never had a problem whacking hornet’s nests, not all filmmakers are so open about the opportunities in AI. I spoke to one prolific Australian director who sides with Schrader, but asked to remain anonymous given the backlash faced by anyone who defends it.“To have the chance to actually create ‘big budget’ film these days is almost impossible,” he said. “The hoops, the paperwork, the gatekeepers, the red tape. For the small percentage of filmmakers that are given that opportunity, there are hundreds of thousands of people who never will. AI now can put the creative choices in everyone’s hands.”As AI assists with more and more books, will traditional literature become a luxury?Getty ImagesThe question is how much those creative choices are worth when the result is effectively an amalgam of other people’s stolen art. But to this filmmaker, the ethical questions surrounding AI are nothing new. “Art is copying. That’s why we have film genres, or orchestras that use the same notes, or books that all use the same list of words as each other. Photographers that didn’t invent a camera taking photos of people or locations that are not theirs, yet they own the photo? They are an artist.”AdvertisementThe bruising 2023 strikes by writers and actors in the United States secured an agreement to stop studios using AI to write or edit scripts. But resistance to AI among creatives and consumers is waning, and the more we’re inured to it, the more likely we are to accept it. The genie can’t be put back in the bottle.Online, there has been a rise of “AI-assisted” novels that authors can pump out in a matter of weeks. I like to think I could tell the difference, or that novel writing is different to filmmaking and won’t be as affected by the use of AI, but then I remember my friend’s screenplay, and I wonder how many would-be writers are already using it to give them an edge. In recent weeks, the major scandal of the writing world has been the withdrawal of Mia Ballard’s horror novel, Shy Girl, following accusations that it was heavily assisted by AI.Jack Heath, bestselling Australian author of Kill Your Husbands, tried his own public experiment, writing a short story based on a prompt he also gave to an AI generator, and then seeing which was better. What he found was surprising and troubling.Jack Heath conducted an experiment with AI and “I’ve been self-conscious about my own work ever since”.“Just knowing that the AI existed seemed to create a new kind of writer’s block that I’d never experienced before,” he told me. “A feeling of, ‘Why am I sweating blood over this keyboard when I could just type in a prompt and have it finished seconds later?’ It felt like chopping vegetables and stir-frying them when there was a frozen meal I could be microwaving instead. Sure, the taste would be better, but not that much better, and it was taking so long!”But as Heath found, “the taste was not better”.“The AI did a surprisingly good job. This had not been my experience in the past. Maybe the technology had improved, but I didn’t think so – I think the difference was that I was writing a short story for children, and it was fairly formulaic. To put it another way, the AI exposed my own lack of imagination, and I’ve been self-conscious about my own work ever since.”AdvertisementUltimately, Heath did not find the experiment to be a ringing endorsement for the creative capabilities of the technology. “Before AI, I never realised how much my enjoyment of art was appreciation for the skill of the artist, and the recognition of the time and effort they must have put in. Watching an athlete or a musician or an actor is fun in part because they’re very good at something very difficult. The AI story had been so easy to create that I couldn’t be bothered engaging with it. Maybe this view is unique to artists, but I don’t think so. Those tennis-ball-launching machines can serve pretty well, but you wouldn’t buy a ticket to watch one.”‘Those tennis-ball-launching machines can serve pretty well, but you wouldn’t buy a ticket to watch one.’Jack Heath, authorWhen I raised misgivings with my friend who used AI to write his screenplay, he pointed out that he did not want to be a writer, he just had this one story he wanted to see realised. I’ve met a lot of people like that over the years, people who have one idea they think would make a great book or film, but lacked the words or the time to explore it. Now, computers can provide the words for them. Maybe that’s only fair. Maybe, as the Australian filmmaker says, AI will only eliminate gatekeeping.“AI won’t destroy traditional filmmaking in the same way that films didn’t destroy theatre. As an indie filmmaker that has made many feature films and has a pile of scripts that sit under my desk that I thought would never see the light of day because their concepts were far too expensive, I’m incredibly excited by what AI is about to offer the world. It won’t kill creativity, it will simply set it free.”Maybe the use of AI is akin to the first use of a camera as opposed to a paintbrush to create a beautiful image. The truth is that it’s not up to sceptics like me to decide or dictate. I can’t tell anyone not to use AI to tell the story they want to tell and I can’t tell anyone not to read or watch it, even if the technology makes me deeply uncomfortable and the results feel soulless. It’s up to the consumer to decide whether AI-generated or -assisted art is worth their time and money. For me, it isn’t.I tend to think Jack Heath is right. The human element, the skill and years of hard work applied in the art, are what make it interesting and worthwhile and personal. Having a good story to tell only matters if you learn how to tell it. That takes time and dedication. A few prompts in an AI doesn’t do that.AdvertisementThe danger here is that art created exclusively by humans becomes a luxury, the equivalent to bespoke handcrafted products you might buy at a maker’s market. I don’t know, ultimately, if the rise of AI will prove to be the end of my profession. But what is no longer in doubt is that it will change it. On all available evidence, it already has.Gabriel Bergmoser is the author of several books, including 2025’s High Rise.