Benjamin is an AI programme designed to write sci-fi movie scripts.

Created by technologist Ross Goodwin, Benjamin – a LSTM (long short-term memory) recurrent neural network, to be exact – was dreamed up by film-maker Oscar Sharp and fed hundreds of scripts from existing science fiction films and TV series from Jurassic Park to Starship Troopers. The result is Sunspring, a short film starring Silicon Valley actor Thomas Middleditch.

This short film is bizarre and funny. Middleditch does a good job of taking gibberish and running with it but the script seems to mostly consist of characters who seem continually confused, asking each other: “What do you mean,” “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” etc.

Having said that, it wasn't much different than watching some actors tackle Shakespeare. Sunspring is kind of brilliant and worth watching for the Whose Line Is It Anyway? feel. There's even a trippy song/dream sequence.

[ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LY7x2IhqjmcOpens in new window ]