# Sunspring - Can a Computer Write a Winning Screenplay? Uh, No **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 9, 2016, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sunspring-can-a-computer-write-a-winning-screenplay-uh-no/756966 "2016-06-09T21:39:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Locrian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/locrian/32/14146_2.png) [@Locrian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Locrian)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2016, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sunspring-can-a-computer-write-a-winning-screenplay-uh-no/756966/1 "2016-06-09T21:39:03Z")
Has anyone seen this short film yet? It's called Sunspring. Three people fed sci-fi screenplays into an A.I. program and the program wrote it's own screenplay. The real idea behind it was if the A.I. could write a screenplay that can win a competition. The answer is clearly no. 😃 At least not yet. It’s only nine minutes long and stars Thomas Middletich. Enjoy! ---
**Author:** ![Sherrerd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sherrerd/32/8_2.png) [@Sherrerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sherrerd)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2016, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sunspring-can-a-computer-write-a-winning-screenplay-uh-no/756966/2 "2016-06-09T22:32:15Z")
Yikes. As one commenter wrote, it sounded like one of those “Bad Lip Reading” videos. Good acting, certainly–but the film is intensely boring. Apparently ‘feeding in screenplays’ does nothing to teach that particular AI program about story structure and other essentials of the art. GIGO seems to be the principle at work (applying more to the program’s capabilities than to the ‘food,’ in this case). ---
**Author:** ![Locrian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/locrian/32/14146_2.png) [@Locrian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Locrian)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2016, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sunspring-can-a-computer-write-a-winning-screenplay-uh-no/756966/3 "2016-06-09T22:44:41Z")
There also seems to be a lot of “I don’t know”, “I don’t know what you mean” and “I don’t know what you’re talking about” in the dialogue. It must be popular in the films they fed it. ---
**Author:** ![Hail\_Ants](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/dc4da7/32.png) [@Hail\_Ants](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hail_Ants)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2016, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sunspring-can-a-computer-write-a-winning-screenplay-uh-no/756966/4 "2016-06-10T02:24:28Z")
Really shows the (not so) fine line between great art and (literally) nearly totally random crap pretending to be. If you were JJ Abrams or Bryan Singer a great trick to play would be to pitch this to a studio and see if they’d be tripping over themselves trying to come up with friendly euphemisms like, _“We love it! But it’s not quite right for us right now…”_ or if they were just honest and said, _“Is this a joke? It sounds like your iPhone’s Siri wrote it!”_ 😃 ---
**Author:** ![tim314](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim314/32/3468_2.png) [@tim314](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tim314)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2016, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sunspring-can-a-computer-write-a-winning-screenplay-uh-no/756966/5 "2016-06-12T04:30:54Z")
I enjoyed it. It’s gibberish, of course, but kind of endearingly so, and the actors sold the hell out of it. The 9 minute run time is about the right length for something like this. My favorite line of the screenplay was the direction “He is standing among the stars and sitting on the floor.” Aren’t we all…