These days its not new to hear on the advances in machine learning - how AI could eventually take up anything that humans do, and beyond. But we, naturally have been thinking linearly - starting with using AI for automation of low end manual tasks, then moving on to the mid-level tasks that need more cognition. The highly creative and artistic tasks that require great talent are reserved for the last, or some optimists like to keep them within the realm of mankind, assuming machines will never get there.
With bold and futuristic experiments in machine learning, it appears that machines are hitting it right across showing strong ability to pick up tasks at the top of job pyramid. As enthusiasts plug them into totally unexpected and not-ready-yet disciplines, they produce surprising results. Google's Magenta project recently presented the first-ever AI-composed music.
And now, AI has written its first screenplay! The machine was fed scripts from hundreds of sci-fi movies like Star Wars, Avengers, Avatar, Star Trek, Aliens, Terminator, apart form a host of other non-mainstream movies in the genre. A LSTM Recurrent Neural network was trained on these scripts, which eventually called itself 'Benjamin' and churned out its novel screenplay. Film makers had taken a target of 48 hours to direct whatever script comes out.
Here is the outcome - a short, 10 minutes video titled 'Sun Spring'. The script appears to be a cryptic interplay amongst 3 characters set in some futuristic world. Dialogues are never straight, and the monologues border non-sensical rants, but surprisingly it keeps you curious. If this is AI's first outing in screenplay, then perhaps it holds lot of promise.
It is also the director and actors who have portrayed the characters strongly and elevated the script. But isn't that also too common in the human realm where experts churn out sub-par screenplays which needs technical expertise to rescue?!
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