Sunspring (2016)
A short film written by a computer.
While most human-computer partnerships have the computer as the junior partner interpreting the human’s requests, this literally flips the script and has the humans interpreting the computer-written screenplay.
Their generator doesn’t have the most sophisticated output I’ve seen. (A Time for Destiny and Terminal Time both have more moment-to-moment coherence, for example.) But those tend to have more human input at the top end, whereas this was written by a neural net that had read a bunch of screenplays.
The human input into Sunspring came at the bottom, as the actors and film crew interpreted the script.
There’s a write-up on Ars Technica with a lot of behind-the-scenes details.
The bot that wrote the script goes by the self-chosen name of Benjamin. It was created by Ross Goodwin. The film was directed by Oscar Sharp and stars Thomas Middleditch, Elisabeth Gray, and Humphrey Ker, with a song by Andrew and Tiger.
Did I mention that Benjamin chose his own name? They were conducting an interview during the awards ceremony, and the bot told them “My name is Benjamin.” The bot also told them:
What is the future of machine written entertainment?
It’s a bit sudden.
I was thinking of the spirit of the men who found me and the children who were all manipulated and full of children. I was worried about my command. I was the scientist of the Holy Ghost.