Who was the first artificial intelligence to write movie reviews? We now know the answer to that question. Since we ran our “100 Years of Artificial Intelligence in the Movies” essay last year, a major technological development has arrived: artificial intelligence has grown powerful enough to write movie reviews.
This year, the research company OpenAI revealed a model called GPT-2, the most powerful artificially intelligent writing tool ever created. This A.I. reads millions of human-generated sentences, learning how to write new sentences in response to human prompts.
For the first time, A.I. can collaborate with human writers on anything: a screenplay, a novel, or a movie review. We began by asked a GPT-2 a leading question: “Who was the first artificial intelligence to write movie reviews?” We got this most excellent computer-generated response (completely unedited):
“Artificial Intelligence Reviewer. It’s the robot you can pay $15 for to watch your movie while you finish making your dinner at home.”
After revealing its name, “Artificial Intelligence Reviewer” listed nine criteria for what makes for a great movie (also unedited):
1. What movie is the best?
2. Should the movie be rated PG-13 (for ages 12 – 16)
3. Is John Malkovich a good actor or a good person?
4. Is this a good movie?
5. Why is the script bad?
6. Would you show this to your parents?
7. Why is the ending horrible?
8. Is you a good person?
9. Is the plot smart?
Want to try this at home? Visit the Talk To Transformer site to explore the power of this new artificial intelligence model—for free!
Artificial Intelligence Reviews Artificial Intelligence
We used technology to create the world’s first A.I. generated movie reviews for Film Threat, feeding GPT-2 a movie synopsis and Film Threat reviews, and then asked “Artificial Intelligence Reviewer” to write a new review.
We copied and pasted those unedited movie opinions into this article.
“Artificial Intelligence Reviewer” will never replace the army of excellent reviewers we have at Film Threat, but we will tap our computer generated critic for the occasional reviews and think pieces. So let’s read the first movie reviews ever written by our Artificial Intelligence Reviewer! You can learn the answers to burning questions like: “Is the plot smart?”
THE TERMINATOR
We began with The Terminator series, one of the first movies covered in our essay about artificial intelligence. Our Artificial Intelligence Reviewer gushed about the films:
“I’m a long-time fan who has followed this franchise for over 20 years … The Terminator movie is an incredible statement to technology’s place in our lives. Not only does it show how our world, our human world has changed in the past few years, but it tells a story of how, and how not, our technologies will shape our future.”
