There are times when I feel that the latest hits in movies or TV shows are just trying to recycle the same ‘formula’ for success. You take what worked before in another movie and try to do the same thing again, either in another setting or just a do another remake of a hit movie. However, till date at least there was some element of human ‘innovation’ involved. If it is up to the Researchers from the Spanish universities of Granada and Cádiz this will no longer be the case. They have created an AI which will use machine learning and AI to ‘assist film scriptwriters produce storylines with the best chance of box-office success‘.
Be prepared to get the 400th reimagining of a pirate story, or a space opera or love story because the AI will predict success and because it will use existing tropes to figure out what is successful there will be a lot fewer movies/shows that push the boundaries. So, movies like the Matrix, ‘Inception’, 2001: A Space Odyssey, or The Blair Witch Project etc will become more and more rare because the studios would be unwilling to risk putting in money into movies that are not a sure hit.
There are a lot of things that Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence can do, but artistry and innovation is not one of them.
The full Paper is available here: The Simpsons did it: Exploring the film trope space and its large scale structure
– Suramya