A polarizing filmmaker tried to use AI to write a script, and it told him to ‘seek professional help’

It’s been seven years since he last directed a feature, so maybe time will have mellowed out the often-incendiary work of Nicolas Winding Refn whenever he decides to step back behind the camera and call action on a new movie.

He was announced to be developing an entire trilogy based on Enid Blyton’s family-friendly Famous Five series of books after all, so maybe he’s seeking to chill out and step away from the bursts of brutal violence, geysers of blood, and psychosexual undertones that have characterized much of his career so far.

Then again, after revealing to IndieWire that he experimented with using ChatGPT to concoct a screenplay and left the artificial intelligence aghast at the suggestions he was inputting, perhaps not.

“If you start asking questions that are controversial or themes that are not acceptable anymore, it shuts down. I very quickly ran into the problem that every time I would ask it things, it came back saying ‘I’m not able to comment on that’ or ‘seek professional help’ or ‘call this hotline,’ almost. And I was like, well, maybe that’s the problem.

That’s the whole reason why we’re doing it is wrong. So for me, it’s almost like if your work is approved by a chat, that’s a great alert system to rewrite. It was very interesting trying it because I thought I was going to use it creatively, but I really ran into always disagreeing with it. So I just stopped using it, and that was that.”

It the machine overlords waiting in the wings to enslave humanity think you need help after telling it what you’re thinking of making a film about, then maybe it’s best to take the advice. Refn has never shied away from the harsher aspects of cinema, but it’s already clear that AI isn’t going to be the one to enable him.