AI and Screenwriting, Why Writers Still Matter

A Real Example: When AI Replaces the Writer

AI is a new technological frontier that is reshaping nearly every part of modern life, from data analytics to the way we create and share art. Screenwriting is no exception. In fact, the rise of AI was one of the key issues at the center of the 2023 Writers’ Strike, because it raised real questions about authorship, credit, and whether human writing would be treated as a replaceable commodity.

AI is here, and AI is writing screenplays. I know because I have read some of them. In many cases, the output can resemble a script at first glance. It might include scene headings, character names, dialogue, and even the occasional plot twist. But the deeper question is not whether AI can generate pages. It’s whether it can tell a cinematic story that connects to human beings through lived experience.

I recently started a writing project with an old friend. We talked through the concept together, and I began the process the way professional projects often begin, by writing a treatment. A treatment is typically a short document, around five pages, that lays out the story in a clear, cinematic way. The plan was to use this treatment to help raise funding and move toward a full screenplay, including my fee to write it.

Then, after some time passed, my friend told me, “Don’t worry about writing the script, I just had AI do it.”

On one level, I felt betrayed. I had done the foundational work, and the script was supposed to be the next step. Outsourcing that step to a machine felt like cutting me out of my own contribution. At the same time, I was intensely curious. If AI had written a screenplay based on my treatment, I needed to see what it looked like.

So my friend sent it to me.

The document technically had the parts you would expect: characters, dialogue, and scene description. It was attempting to translate the story from my treatment into screenplay form. But it immediately revealed problems. The formatting was inconsistent and unprofessional. The page was flooded with parentheticals that read like constant direction to the actors, the director, and the editor. Even worse, it still contained prompt language, the kind of text that belongs in a chat window, not in a screenplay anyone should take seriously.

Those flaws were visible. The bigger flaw was deeper.

The script had no soul.

Reading it felt like trying to have a heart-to-heart conversation with a Magic Eight Ball. The responses were technically words, but they did not carry emotional truth. The scenes did not feel inhabited. The people didn’t feel like people. It was the difference between imitation and experience, between pattern and perspective.

So yes, AI can generate a feature-length script if you ask it to. You can request 110 pages and get something that resembles a screenplay on the surface. But at this stage, what AI cannot do, and may never fully do, is bring human interiority into the work in a way that moves other humans. A screenwriter is not just assembling plot events. A screenwriter is translating lived experience into cinematic language: behavior, subtext, silence, pressure, consequence, and change.

AI can’t tell your story. It can’t access emotional truth the way a writer can because it has not lived a life. It has not fallen in love. It has not grieved. It has not had that private moment when a film line hits you so hard you feel your direction shift, like “Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys.” It has not watched an impactful film on a screen and said, " This is what I was meant to do.”

That does not mean AI has no place in the creative process. Used ethically, it can be helpful for research support, summarizing background material, organizing notes, or generating idea variations when you are stuck. It can function like a tool, and tools can be valuable. But storytelling is not fundamentally about algorithms. It is about empathy, perspective, and the human ability to recognize ourselves in someone else’s struggle. If you want to think of great character names that would feel right at home in your character’s neighborhood in Newfoundland, AI’s your guy. AI is great at providing objective notes about your script (It’s also great at blowing smoke up your ass, so be careful here.)

In the end, the point of screenwriting is to communicate humanity through cinematic storytelling—to connect with other humans through this beautiful art form. A screenplay is not just properly formatted pages. It is a human experience shaped into a cinematic journey that makes someone in a dark theater feel understood, connected, and less alone. AI can assist with the scaffolding. It cannot supply the soul. That part still belongs to the writer, and it always will.

If you want to learn how to better express umanity through cinematic storytelling, check out my course Screenwriting 101: How to Turn Your Idea Into a Screenplay.