“Who Wrote This New Episode of Succession: Was it I, or A.I.?”

 

“Who Wrote This New Episode of Succession: Was it I, or A.I.?”

 

 

First, let’s be clear, the story arcs for this season were laid out early on by our incredible, amazing showrunner, Jesse. It was known from our first writers’ meeting there would be the putative sale of Royco and that Logan Roy would “die” as early as Episode 3. I believe I, however, might have been the one who suggested bringing Brian Cox back as a “ghost” at the board meeting chaired by Kendall in the manner of Hamlet, or Macbeth’s Banquo, as a drug-induced hallucination. That may be why I lucked into getting assigned that episode! Ken’s resumption of his addictive behavior was more or less baked in, as well, given the rising pressure of his ambition, his guilt feelings, and the intense sibling rivalry around the sale of the company. We knew the coital reunion between Tom and Shiv would have to be delicately handled, and I look forward to seeing how my colleagues finesse Greg’s suicide. My episode’s challenge was the build-up to the physical altercation, the donnybrook between Ken and Roman in the Royco boardroom. We all agreed it would need real, sufficient provocation. This was one scene none of the 19 iterations created by ChatGPT4 for my episode, “The Roman Wars Redux,” did convincingly. 

 

Though A.I. could have generated an almost infinite number of drafts of my episode, in the end what’s required is discretion, that the right choices be made. It’s the choosing that’s critical. After reading all 19 versions, I picked the best six to incorporate into my draft. (The late inclusion of Matthias’ secretly infusing Ken’s drink with ketamine when he meets with the sibling triumvirate prior to the board meeting eliminated several from consideration). I then selected, edited, rearranged, and tweaked scenes from each of the A.I. drafts to produce the first final draft of Episode 7.

 

However, not one of the A.I. drafts of the scene building to the violent confrontation between Roman and Kendall offerred a sufficient verbal trigger. For example, here was the best:

 

                                                                              SHIV 

                                                        Ken, are you insane!?

 

                                                                             ROMAN

                                                        You f***ing lying coprolith, chew on my pizzle!

 

                                                                             KENDALL

                                                        That’s enough from you, smegma face! You mewling little --

 

                                                                              ROMAN

                                                        --Smegma face?! SMEGMA FACE!!

 

Roman lunges at Kendall!

 

Spoiler Alert: When the episode airs it’ll be clear how little this A.I. draft contributed.

 

What remains unchanged in this nascent age of A.I. is that the labor required to produce a series episode continues to be deemed ‘dog’s work.’ It’s the creative decisions made before and after, of what material goes into the final draft, the discriminating of good from better and better from best, that is the real writing, much of it done by the showrunner who, as the apex predator, determines the episode’s final shape. Certainly, story choices and scenes could be ‘crowdsourced’ to educe the most optimally satisfying plot. But how do you keep a story under wraps, NDAs not withstanding, once its beats are made public? The current state of A.I. is woefully inadequate to the task of gauging human emotional responses. Until such time as it becomes capable, and who knows what difficulties and disappointments lie in store for the show that relies on machine discriminations of audience preferences, we’re left with much the same question Shakespeare and Homeric scholars have long asked: Who, really, wrote it?

 

Craig Tepper wrote an Edgar-nominated LAW & ORDER, the novel I. and is presently finishing a fiction autobiography, I ATE MICK JAGGER’S COLD LASAGNA