Charlie Brooker, right, speaking with Ed Gamble at ETVF
ETVF: Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker told Edinburgh TV Festival that he doesn’t believe audiences want to see content created entirely by generative AI.
On the last day of the event, the acclaimed writer, producer and presenter was the subject of an hour-long ‘In Conversation’ session moderated by comedian Ed Gamble.
Brooker is the mind behind satirical shows such as mockumentary series Cunk on Earth, zombie horror Dead Set and media-themed sitcom Nathan Barley.
He is best known as creator of dystopian anthology series Black Mirror, which has run for seven seasons on Netflix.
The futuristic show riffs around themes exploring society’s fears of advanced technology. Gamble asked Brooker what impact he believed AI would have on the creative process in television.
“I have to believe that audiences want humans communicating with them, not just machines and devices,” Brooker told delegates in the packed auditorium.
“I can see the value of it [AI] as an analytical tool or something like that, but I hope there is still a job for keeping keyboards warm with flesh.”
Brooker has explored AI in Black Mirror, most notably in the episode Be Right Back, in which a grieving woman played by Hayley Atwell uses the technology to generate a digital replica of her dead boyfriend (Domhnall Gleeson).
Tina Fey, left, speaking with Graham Norton
Another instalment, Joan Is Awful, stars Annie Murphy as a woman whose life is adapted in real-time into a TV reality series by a Netflix-like streaming service called Streamberry.
Brooker told ETVF that he foresees TV executives being able to use AI to critique scripts.
He said: “Execs will take our scripts, feed them into a computer, watch a [AI-generated] rough video preview of the show and say, ‘It got a bit boring in the third act.’ That feels plausible to me.”
The concluding session of ETVF saw Graham Norton interview Tina Fey about her career as an actor, producer, screenwriter and author. Fey reveal that former British prime minister David Cameron once invited her to visit the UK to persuade English comedy writers to produce more long-running shows like 30 Rock, which ran for 144 episodes.
She said: “He asked if I’d be willing to come and meet British showrunners and convince them to make hundreds of episodes instead of just eight.
“I told him I could not, because [in the US] we all want to be like Ricky Gervais and make 12 half-hours. That’s the lifestyle most of us want.”
