All summer long, we interview employees, freelancers, civil servants, and business leaders about their relationship with generative artificial intelligence. How do they use it, how do it change their professional practices? Today, Laura Ghazal, screenwriter.
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Laura Ghazal defines herself as a Swiss army knife. At 41, she is a screenwriter, director of short films, advertising films and audio podcasts. She writes humor columns for a magazine, and she went on stage in 2021, for her first one-woman show. Jobs all closely linked to writing.
She remembers the first time she tested ChatGPT, in early 2023: “I asked ChatGPT to come up with five ideas for a script, convinced that he wouldn’t come up with anything interesting. Suddenly, I have a co-writer, with five ideas, four bad and one okay.”
“There, I said to myself that when productions need ideas, they might no longer come through me. My first reaction was that I was overcome by fear.”
Laura Ghazalscreenwriter, director of short films, advertising films and audio podcasts
Laura Ghazal says she overcame her fear by learning to master these AIs, capable of generating text. “I have a belief that it is not AI that will steal my job, but those who know how to use it and so, a year and a half later, it is a tool in a toolbox, where I have many other tools. I do not use ChatGPT daily, it is a weapon that I draw if I have writer’s block. Often, when I ask ChatGPT for ideas, what it sends back to me, I tell myself that this is exactly what I should not go towards.”
“If ChatGPT was trained on existing writings, if it offers me this, it is because somewhere, it already exists. But from these first ideas, other ideas will be born. It is a brainstorming tool.”
What reassures Laure Ghazal is that for the moment, ChatGPT does not know how to convey feelings, she says, and that it is devoid of humor. She gives us an example.
“I had to do a humor column, I was really late, I copied and pasted my style on ChatGPT, I gave him my old columns, I gave him a subject. The result was so bad, in terms of “punchlines” and jokes, that I used it to take the opposite view, by saying: “I reassure you, this joke is not mine, it is from ChatGPT”.
“ChatGPT has not lived, it is not a human, it gives the illusion of intelligence, but it is not intelligent, it is just mathematics. There are places where it is very strong, and places where it is not yet, and that suits me! Knowing its strengths and weaknesses, when I am faced with productions that think that ChatGPT can do everything, I am credible to explain what it can do or not do.”
Screenwriter Laura Ghazal
Today, Laura Ghazal says she is both skeptical and curious about generative artificial intelligence. If they are incapable of writing a script with good dialogue, she says, she wonders about the future, given the speed at which these new tools are being perfected.
To explore these questions, Laura Ghazal created IAtusa podcast that discusses generative AI with specialist Gilles Guerraz.
The IAtus podcast link