Charlie Brooker, creator of hit Netflix series “Black Mirror,” has weighed in again on the debate around AI.
Earlier this month, Brooker had revealed to Empire magazine that he went full “Black Mirror” by asking the artificial intelligence chatbot known as ChatGPT to write an episode of his beloved anthology series. The final results were “shit,” according to Brooker.
On Friday, Brooker was asked by Sky News if U.K. politicians were doing enough about AI. In response, Brooker joked: “If Rishi Sunak had been replaced by AI, I probably wouldn’t have noticed. Actually, he’d be a good character to pop up like, you know the paper clip that used to pop up in Microsoft Word? I’d like a little Rishi Sunak that pops up and goes, ‘It looks like you’re writing about how depressing the government is – would you like some help with that’?'”
The “Joan is Lawless” episode of season 6 of “Black Mirror,” which is currently streaming, deals with AI.
Brooker is a vocal supporter of the ongoing writers strike and was present in solidarity at the protest in London on June 14. “As a writer I’m here to show my support,” Brooker had told Variety then. “I worry for a living and I’m very worried about AI and the use of ChatGPT and things like that so that’s a particular concern to me so that’s why I’m here. That was written and wrapped before ChatGPT and stuff like that launched.”
“You can’t put the genie back in the bottle entirely, but I do think they’re useful tools for writers in the same way photoshop is a useful tool for illustrators and photographers and so on,” Brooker had added. “So I don’t know. It’s above my pay grade to know how you regulate it, what sort of agreement there is. But I think it needs to be controlled.”
Equity, the U.K. trade union for performers and creatives, has launched a comprehensive toolkit aimed at protecting performers from the increasing use of unregulated in the entertainment industry.
The governance of AI is the subject of an ongoing debate in the U.K. with the government introducing a white paper proposing regulation in the sector in March this year, with creative industry chiefs calling for regulation.
