Cue the obligatory Skynet jokes, because artificial intelligence is about to consume us all! In today’s day and age, machines are helping to expedite the production process on many fronts, and in many cases, new software is also helping to reduce the number of workers needed to get processes done on the technical side, but those people who are in the more creative industries have nothing to worry about, right?

Wrong! A new report from Variety states that the founder of AI outfit ScriptBook could have saved Sony Pictures a boatload of money from 2015 to 2017 had they used their algorithms to greenlight their movies. That’s right, rather than have human beings pore over the scripts, assess strengths, weaknesses, industry trends and the like, they would utilize AI to make those decisions for them.

During that period, Sony released 62 films, and of those films, 32 ended up losing money for Sony. Scriptbook founder Nadira Azermai claimed that their algorithms analyzed screenplays for these films and identified 22 of these 32 box-office failures.

“If Sony had used our system they could have eliminated 22 movies that failed financially,” said Azermai.

Their software would put a lot of script readers out of the business, and while that may not save them a lot of money (let’s be real, most of those were unpaid interns), it could result in fewer box-office flops.

“Our mission is to revolutionize the business of storytelling by using AI to help producers, distributors, sales agents and financiers assess their risk.”

Sounds ambitious, but their software looks on point. You can check out their official site HERE, and man, do I see this as a brave new world of filmmaking. From the info on their site, it looks like it can give predictive demographic targets, character analyses, emotions on a scene-by-scene basis, Bechdel test assessments, and finally, box-office predictions.

What do you think of this new service? Let us know your thoughts down below!

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SOURCE: Variety