Neither artificial or intelligent: Applications of artificial intelligence (AI) and creative machine learning in screenwriting and screen story development in the Charismatic consortium

In 2024, the Innovate UK-funded Charismatic R&D project brought together a consortium consisting of Oxford AI company Charisma and creative partners Channel 4 and Aardman Animation, with research teams from University of the Arts London and Falmouth University’s Sound/Image Cinema Lab. Our wider aim was to explore the opportunities presented by developing AI technologies to enhance and supplement screen storytelling practice and apply this research in developing tools that could aid the production of film and television, responding to specific requests from the creative partners. This presentation is the first formal articulation of an article for the Journal of Screenwriting, and we’re focusing on writing and writers in this paper. A key objective of Charismatic was to identify innovation and practice led by creatives in the screen industries themselves and develop tools to address this need. The ambition to create bespoke tools for storytelling meeting creative demand in the UK is in contrast to the more commonly available tools that use existing general-purpose AI models from the so-called magnificent seven of tech companies and emergent start-ups, mainly from the US. Our ambition was to serve as a lab that explored the space between AI technologies and creatives within the screen industries across three areas, to (1) accelerate, improve and strengthen storytelling skills through the tools created, including with non-specialist and diverse users, (2) bridge a perceived gap between AI technologies and the creative industries through workshops and data collection, and to (3) create new visual story forms across multiple media, through dynamic narrative design, characters and audience interaction and participation.