Rafael Leal

The robot and us: an early account of the AI revolution in Screenwriting

Independent, Brazil, Germany

The release of ChatGPT in November 2022 has been provoking waves of innovation, fear
and ethical challenges in many text-based activities, including Screenwriting. This is an
exploratory study of the intersection between screenwriting and Large Language Models,
where the author, as a practitioner as well as a researcher, delves into the transformative
impact of AI tools in Screenwriting, with a primary focus on the use of ChatGPT in daily
script development activities and research.

Unlike web search tools, such as Google, that show a list of results after a prompt, LLMs
such as ChatGPT allow instruction tuning, establishing a dialogue-like prompt that results in
a more accurate – often astonishing – set of results for complex tasks. The study starts with a
first-person account of one year of professional usage of ChatGPT as a Screenwriter,
followed by an introduction of the main concepts and categories regarding prompt
engineering in Screenwriting, such as Zero-shot, Few-shot and Chain-of-Thought Prompting,
as well as Self-Consistency.

In other words, the study investigates how the integration of LLM influences the creative
process, examining shifts in idea generation, character development, and plot structuring,
and how screenwriters can operate the tool in order to get results. Through a first-person
account of the author’s own experiences, the research illuminates the ways in which AI has
been becoming an integral part of the writer’s toolkit, potentially reshaping traditional
approaches to script development, author theory and to screenwriting research itself.
This also brings ethical implications, such as biased data, racism and sexism, authorship
and data protection, opening up an important discussion about the impact of LLM in the film
industry and especially in script development. Furthermore, the research explores the
dynamics of collaboration between the human screenwriter/researcher and the LLM, delving
into the intricacies of navigating this relationship, emphasizing the challenges that arise from
the synergy between human and machine in a creative environment, something that does
not happen without conflict.

RAFAEL LEAL (Rio de Janeiro, 1982) is a screenwriter and producer for film, TV and new
media, based in Berlin, who has created films and series for Disney, NBC/Universal and Fox,
among others, in partnership with some of the most important Brazilian production
companies. Holding a PhD in Film and Media from Universidade Federal Fluminense
(Brazil), Rafael developed part of his doctoral research at LMU München (Germany) with a
DAAD grant, about virtual reality and metaverse, modalities that are growing in importance in
his artistic practice. Between 2016 and 2022, Rafael was professor of Screenwriting at the
Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro, where he still coordinates the
development of the new Screenwriting postgraduate program. Rafael acted as script doctor
in dozens of projects and mentored more than 250 screenwriters in labs such as FLUP –
Feira Literária das Periferias, Gullane Narrativas Negras and recently at Netflix’s Segundo
Ato. Currently, Rafael is co-creator and head-writer of an original series for Disney+.