Invisible Hands: an AI-generated show
just to prove how it can be done and why it would be bad
Est. Read Time: 8 minutes. Read Time brought to you once again by the Ashburton Energy + Hair Logistics Group, in association with the Bradley Hills Bureau of Corrections + Housing.
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SHOWS:
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Sternal Journalists!
A few weeks ago, I was at a party and a friend of mine who is not a quote-unquote creative and is not in quote-unquote the industry asked from a place of actual curiosity, “What’s the deal with the writers strike and AI? Can AI actually write a TV show?”
As a writer (but not writers guild writer [but I totally support the WGA and the strike and think the reasons for the strike are noble {maybe more on that next week}]) and a weirdo who has messed around with Chat GPT a fair amount, I was gleeful to show him.
So I said, “Let’s pretend you’re some executive who normally hires writers to write television shows or buys shows or ideas from writers or anything like that. Tell me some of your favorite shows or networks and a couple things you would want from a show that you hope would make money.”
The prompt we came up with was:
“Please respond as a television executive for HBO specializing in drama. I’d like 5 ideas for shows that have the same tone and style as true detective, but cater towards Gen Z and each have a component that would be a good awards play.”
For your sake as reader, I will tell you that, while all of the ideas kind of sucked, they all looked relatively like TV show ideas. The one I thought sucked the least was:
"Invisible Hands": This character-driven drama revolves around a group of young hackers who use their skills to expose powerful individuals involved in illegal activities. Each season would focus on a different target, blending elements of cyber-thriller and crime drama with complex character development. The show's strong writing, powerful acting, and timely themes would make it a strong contender for awards.”
The friend, who quite reasonably had not messed with Chat GPT before, was wowed at how, indeed, none of this was being pulled from the internet someplace but rather generated based on having virtually all the information ever from the internet and then predicting word after word in a sequence.
The conversation at the party ended. But a couple days ago, I found this conversation in my Chat GPT history, and decided to dig deeper: how developed of a television show could I get just by prompting and directing and redirecting, but without ever providing ideas to the Chat GPT? Never telling, only asking. Here’s where were got:
"Invisible Hands" centers around four young hackers: Cipher, Glitch, Wraith, and Siren. Brought together by their shared ambition to enact change in an increasingly unjust world, they set their sights on Richard Kane, a charismatic business tycoon whose public persona as a climate crusader belies a much darker truth. As each hacker grapples with personal demons and ethical dilemmas, they unite to expose Kane's hidden network of environmental exploitation.
Cipher, a cryptography genius, hails from a little-known community in the San Joaquin Valley, California, a region plagued by severe water contamination due to agricultural runoff and lax environmental regulations. Raised amidst miles of lush farmland that hid a toxic secret, he found refuge in the limitless realms of code, teaching himself programming and cryptography on a secondhand laptop. His extraordinary talent earned him a scholarship to MIT, a world away from his rural beginnings. Yet the memories of dry wells, toxic tap water, and the silent suffering of his community remain etched in his mind.
Glitch, once a notorious black-hat hacker known for her ruthless digital assaults on numerous corporations, grapples with the unintended consequences of her actions. Her past exploits, initially aimed at corporate accountability, inadvertently led to thousands of job losses and disrupted lives. Now, she's haunted by the fallout of her actions and seeks redemption.
Wraith, originally from Brooklyn, New York, watched as gentrification shuttered his family's bodega and displaced his neighbors. In response, he turned to street art, creating vivid murals that documented his community's transformation. However, increasing surveillance made his artistic activism risky. When his family's bodega closed, he inherited an old computer system they used for inventory management. Intrigued, he delved into the world of online privacy, cybersecurity, and digital surveillance evasion. With the same persistence he used to evade law enforcement on the streets, he honed these digital skills, becoming adept at remaining unseen in both physical and virtual spaces.
Siren, a captivating strategist with an uncanny talent for persuasion, hails from the glossy corridors of Washington D.C.'s lobbying firms. Using her charm and intellect, she navigated the maze of political power, gaining insider knowledge about the often blurred lines between corporate interests and governmental policy. However, the more she mastered the game, the more she grappled with the ethical lines she was forced to cross.When she uncovered disturbing links between her firm and companies contributing to environmental degradation, she was faced with a moral dilemma that ultimately led her to leave her high-powered job. Joining the hacker group, Siren leverages her insider knowledge and manipulation skills to expose the very structures she once upheld. Yet, she continues to struggle with the moral implications of her actions, wrestling with the question of whether the ends truly justify the means.
Their target, Richard Kane, is a well-known figure, lauded for his leadership in sustainable development. But behind closed doors, Kane profits from projects causing environmental harm and displacing vulnerable communities, hiding his destructive ventures behind a complex network of greenwashing operations. Kane, however, isn't just a villain with a climate crusader's mask. He truly believes that his methods, however ruthless, are necessary for progress. Kane is convinced that his actions will ultimately lead to a more sustainable future, a delusion that makes him a formidable, unwavering opponent.
One typical episode might find our hackers uncovering Kane's operation in a small coastal town, where a supposed wind energy project conceals an illegal sand mining operation causing coastal erosion and destruction of marine life. The episode would balance the suspense of their investigation with personal subplots: Cipher reconnecting with a childhood friend now affected by Kane's operation, Glitch facing an old adversary, Wraith's graffiti coming under scrutiny, and Siren questioning the toll of their actions on her conscience.The first season would chart their attempt to expose Kane's exploitation of this coastal town, paralleling their quest with personal growth and revelations. Each victory and setback on their mission would serve as a catalyst for change, deepening their bonds, testing their beliefs, and forcing them to confront their own pasts.
"Invisible Hands" isn't just a cyber-thriller. It's an exploration of justice in the digital age, a critique of environmental hypocrisy, and a testament to the resilience of the human spirit. At its heart, it's about a group of young people grappling with the world they've inherited and their determination to make it better. It's their story – their failures, victories, sacrifices, and moments of connection – that will keep viewers coming back each week.
As the season concludes, our hackers unearth Kane's most horrifying project yet: an audacious geoengineering scheme under the guise of climate control. While it ostensibly promises to buy more time against global warming, its real impact accelerates the melting of Arctic ice to open up untapped, lucrative oil reserves. The chilling revelation is that our heroes' actions may have inadvertently sped up this process.
Viewers are left to question their own complicity. Rooting for our heroes has also meant rooting for the hastening of a scheme that threatens to devastate our climate for the sake of profit. The impending catastrophe feels more personal and immediate; we're no longer dealing with a distant menace, but an imminent disaster that could fast-forward Earth's decline beyond our most alarming predictions. The fight is no longer just against Kane – it's against the ticking clock of our own survival.
While this isn’t a perfect pitch—the names are kinda dumb, it feels a little more Netflix Outer Banks audience grab than HBO Succession awards grab, it doesn’t feel human-centered—it is a jumping off point that could theoretically create a show that is technically better than some of the shit that’s on TV.
The very justifiable fear is that execs will sit on Chat GPT all day and come up with murky outlines like this for shows based on the things they want to emulate—“Give me 5 ideas for Euphoria-style shows that could work on NBC.”—and then claim ownership of this “IP” and ask writers to develop this IP rather than pitch their own ideas (ideas the writer would have more and actual ownership of).
But an even scarier and more nefarious thing is possible. Instead of just coming up with the stuff they want to make, they could come up with a database of concepts. If you have 5 pieces of AI IP, it acts relatively the same way as normal IP on the writer side. The writer has to actually like it or convince themselves they won’t wanna die working on it for the next 5 years.
But if you have 1,000 pieces of AI IP (a number I genuinely think you could generate within a month or two), then you could have all of them categorized by type of protagonist, themes, locations, length of story, anything, anything, ANYTHING!
So that when a writer comes in to meet and tells the exec what they’re into or what sort of things they’re working on, that exec has 3 pieces of IP ready to go that are legitimately interesting to the writer.
This is bad because it means that, in a landscape already dominated by production companies buying up the rights to books and real life stories and graphic novels and games and whatever and hoping the writer will write this thing, AI-assisted execs will be that but on steroids. Instead of hoping they can get you into the ideas they already own, they will have created a system where they essentially provably own every idea.
Recommendations
Biography of X. Novel. More on this another day, but I love this book.
Losing the Mess. Substack. She wrote the above book. If you like this, you’ll like the book even more.
The Other Two. Television Show. This season might have fewer jokes some episodes, but the big picture stuff is gut punchy.
The System That Failed Jordan Neely. Article. Details, in a very current way, the system of organizations and people trying to help the homeless in New York, and how it falls short. Not in a “and here’s how to fix it” way which would be disingenuous, but in a “this is how non-comprehensive the system is” way which I think most people should better understand if they can.
Much love! Take care!
Julian
P.S. here is a terrifying and bad “Invisible Hands” poster that Dall-E made based on a prompt that Chat GPT wrote for me:
Cipher's storyline is ripped straight from Erin Brokovich