Short AI Dramas

I felt compelled to write this blog after spending hours scrolling through my Facebook feeds and Instagram feeds to see different episodes of short AI dramas. The first time I ran across one, I thought it was a book trailer. It intrigued me and I thought, "I want to read this book." But there was no information on the book, "Deny Me, Dragon King." It turned out to be an episode of a much larger drama. I kept scrolling that day and found a couple more episodes that were interesting. Well, like a good movie, I wanted to see how it ended. Instead, I discovered you had to download an APP to see more. The gimmick was 'you never have to pay.' That was a lie. The first thing the APP does is lock the screen until you commit to a membership. I promptly removed the APP.

The more I thought about the two main characters, the more I wanted to see if I could pull up another episode. The man looked vaguely familiar. I'm sure the female lead was familiar too, but I couldn't figure out who she was. While holding my phone, I discussed this with my daughter and told her the man reminded me of Henry Cavill as he looked in The Witcher. Later that night, while scrolling and looking for more episodes, I came across Henry Cavill in all sorts of interviews and scenes from The Witcher. Was my phone listening to me? I really wanted to see episodes from the drama I stumbled across.

I couldn't let go of my obsession. I found myself scrolling everyday to catch a glimpse of another episode. Instead, I found snippets of episodes. Not only of "Deny Me, Dragon King," but other dramas. The amazing thing I discovered was that most of the men reminded me of Henry Cavill with different lengths and color of hair, different colored eyes, sometimes with elf ears, or as a wolf. The more I watched, I realized that it was AI. The characters are so lifelike. After a couple days of scrolling, I started seeing variations in the men. Some were younger looking and similar to the men I've seen in Manga Stories. The secondary characters have similar people across all stories. Usually the villain is a jealous female.

Then, I had the thought that I would love to see my books made into movies because they played as movies in my head while I wrote them. I don't remember if I spoke to my daughter on the phone about that thought, but then I started seeing all kinds of ADs about making movies with Chat GPT, Claude, and others I can't remember. I don't know how to use AI, let alone, make a movie. But one of the ADs said to just tell Claude to make you a movie. Well, I actually have a screenplay of one of my books, but how can a program make a movie of what is in my head. Even if it could read my screenplay, it wouldn't know what I thought the characters looked like. Then, I thought more about my characters. In the first book, I was inspired by my eldest son. The second book, I was inspired by my youngest son. Book three, was based on my daughter's personality.

I wondered if Henry Cavill knew how they used his features for all those characters in these dramas. How would he feel if he knew this? How would my adult children feel if they saw their likeness displayed in my stories? How can this AI come up with a completely unique person, not based on any live person? These characters in these dramas look like living, breathing human beings. I know it would be difficult to have one of my books made into a movie the old fashioned way, but this AI stuff makes it seem like a real possibility. The only thing holding me back is me.

Do you think this is the future of movies? Would you watch an AI drama? And how far is too far using someone's image in an AI drama? Then there's the music aspect of films. Songwriters don't want their work stolen, just as writers don't want their work stolen either. I wonder who wrote those short AI dramas? Or was it the work of authors? Were they compensated? Who did the voices? The more I think about it, the more questions I have. Let me know what you think? Have you run across these short dramas? I still want to know what happens to Kael and Lyra.