After One Last Adventure: The Making of Stranger Things 5 dropped, some fans spent time nalyzing it. They studied clips to examine the cast’s reactions during table reads, scrutinized behind-the-scenes interactions, and froze certain frames to search for easter eggs. One of these screenshots was of a laptop screen that showed a Google Doc with a draft of a script in progress and a bunch of other tabs open in the same browser. When they zoomed in, they thought they saw Reddit and ChatGPT. Rumors quickly spread that the Duffer Brothers got plot ideas from Reddit fan theories and used ChatGPT to write their scripts.
You can clearly see the Reddit logo, but the other logo was too blurry to tell if it was ChatGPT. The reactions online were fairly split, with more level-headed fans pointing out that sometimes a tab is just a tab. Lots of people have multiple tabs open at once, including Reddit and ChatGPT. Other fans insisted it was proof that generative-AI was responsible for the difference in quality between this season and previous seasons. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the documentary’s director, Martina Radwan, was asked whether or not the Duffers had ChatGPT open, and if so, was it used to produce season five scripts. Her answer? She didn’t see anything of the sort.
You’ve got super fans pausing and zooming in on individual frames of your documentary. One allegedly shows one of the Duffers with a ChatGPT tab open on their computer. Did they use ChatGPT in your presence, and if so, what for?
I mean, are we even sure they had ChatGPT open?I’m personally not, but the internet seems sure.
Well, there’s a lot of chatter where [social media users] are like, “We don’t really know, but we’re assuming.” But to me it’s like, doesn’t everybody have it open, to just do quick research?I do.
How can you possibly write a storyline with 19 characters and use ChatGPT, I don’t even understand.I don’t think many fans truly believe the Duffers had gen-AI write their scripts, I think it’s more of an aversion to the use of the technology in general in Hollywood.
Again, first of all, nobody has actually proved that it was open. That’s like having your iPhone next to your computer while you’re writing a story. We just use these tools … while multitasking. So there’s a lot going on all the time, every time. What I find heartbreaking is everybody loves the show, and suddenly we need to pick it apart.So just to button-up the topic: You didn’t witness an unethical use of generative-AI in the writers room?
No, of course not. I witnessed creative exchanges. I witnessed conversation. People think “writers room” means people are sitting there writing. No, it’s a creative exchange. It’s story development. And, of course, you go places in your creative mind and then you come back [to the script]. I think being in the writers room is such a privilege and such a gift to be able to witness that.We’ve spoken about a lot of what I’ve seen online, but what is the response to the doc that has reached you personally?
What I find interesting is that people talk about things that are not there, when, like— why are we discussing things that are not there, and not what’s actually there? You know, that’s new. I understand — fans are so invested, the show has [had] such a longevity — it’s like 10 years — and so I understand that fans who were really, really invested are sad that it’s over. They don’t want it to be over. They hope for more. I get all that.
I suggested the other day that if it was ChatGPT, it was more likely that they were using it for “research.” I don’t know if that’s better or worse, but I’ve had enough people tell me firsthand that they go to ChatGPT for “everything,” so I can believe Matt and Ross do, too. I have no idea whether or not you can write a storyline with 19 different characters using it, but I know lots of people also find it to be a useful tool for organization and planning. For whatever it’s worth, in cleaned up images, you can make out that the tabs-in-question are labeled “506” and “507,” so they had something to do with episodes six and seven.
THR makes a good point here about the general public having strong feelings about AI in general. I think this controversy is a combination of disappointed fans looking to place blame and ChatGPT being a convenient scapegoat. I believe Radwan when she says that she witnessed creative exchanges because she captured many of them on film. Unfortunately, they show that the Duffers were simply flying by the seat of their pants, trying to write episodes and figure out the ending of their show as they went along. They had years in between seasons to come up with everything and somehow waited until the very last minute. I don’t think ChatGPT is to blame for this one.
photos credit Netflix and Getty