When it comes to movie and television productions, California has fairly strict labor laws, especially when it comes to babies. For instance, California’s lawmakers have declared that a baby’s skin is very sensitive and therefore can be under the hot studio lights for only a few minutes at a time. (And then apparently they also need to sleep and eat and be held, but that’s not part of the California legal code.)
So if you’re foolish enough to write a scene requiring a baby to appear, you’d better be prepared for a long shooting day. Either that or solve the problem the Hollywood way, which is to always hire twins (or, better, triplets) to portray a single baby, and keep swapping them out every few minutes.
The first time I wrote a show with a baby front-and-center, the studio lawyer who handled labor relations sat me down to go over the rules of working with infants. It became instantly clear that what was supposed to be a half-hour show shot in one night was about to become a half-hour show shot over the course of a calendar year.
On the page, obviously, everything looks fine. You never think when you write the line “The baby smiles, then vomits” that you’re going to have to figure out a way to make that happen—within, it goes without saying, the bounds of common decency and the State of California Child Protection code. Which aren’t the same thing.
The good news is, the entertainment industry is a constellation of entrepreneurial ventures designed to help studios solve thorny problems like that and cut production costs. So it was only a matter of time before someone invented a fairly real-looking robot baby—with skin that’s disturbingly soft and a body that’s hauntingly wiggly. Over the past few years, the robot baby has gotten really good. Robot babies don’t need naps or breaks or human affection, which makes them ideally suited to show business.
The robot baby, in other words, is to real babies what artificial intelligence is to real writers: It’s a very good imitation of the real thing, and in most cases it does just fine. And also: It’s only going to become more baby and less robot.
So it makes sense that the introduction of AI into the Hollywood creative process is encouraging a lot of panic and doom-casting, but it’s also inspiring among writers a lot of conversations that aren’t very nice, like: Who has talent and who doesn’t? Which specific genres can use a robot writer and which can’t? When writers in show business talk about AI, it often boils down to this: What can replace me vs. what can replace you?
I heard a writer friend say this: “You know when I hear writers being terrified that AI is going to replace them, I always wonder, God, how bad a writer are you?”
I heard another writer friend say this: “I never met an executive or a director who cared if the writing was good. They just want it mediocre, which is what AI will give them.” That one stings because it makes the most painful sound anyone in show business wants to hear, and that’s the ring of truth.
Type into the Amazon search bar these words, “Screenwriting format story structure guide,” and you’ll be treated to dozens and dozens of books, each offering a definitive set of rules for writing a “hit” screenplay. Most of these books are rigidly prescriptive: Every screenplay is the hero’s journey, every inciting incident must happen by page 11, and on page 80, there must be the “refusal of the call” setting the hero up for the third act, which takes place between pages 85 and 100. These rules aren’t made up. They’re based on successful studio products that have been analyzed and distilled. You might say they form a very crude kind of…algorithm.
Head to your local gym at nearly any time of day, glance at the televisions suspended above the treadmills, and you’ll notice that they’re all playing some episode from producer Dick Wolf’s Law & Order universe, and you’ll be able to know what time it is by watching what the characters are doing onscreen. Don’t bother to look at your watch. If the detectives are interviewing witnesses, it’s early in the show—so it’s probably about fifteen minutes past the hour. If they’re sweating a suspect, it’s about half past. If the scenes have shifted to the courtroom, it’s 45 minutes past the hour. You might call those the algorithmic parameters of an episode.
Writers love courtroom scenes because they’re so easy to write—a character stands, delivers a monologue, then sits—and a lot of the dialogue is already written. You’re out of order, counselor! My chambers, now! I withdraw the question! You’re on thin ice, counselor. There better be a question in there somewhere. That’s what AI developers call a knowledge base.
Medical shows are even better. There are always pages and pages of technical dialogue that’s lifted directly from textbooks and real doctors—dialogue, by the way, that no screenwriter understands. It’s pretty much a cut-and-paste job for a few pages and some important speeches, followed by (often) what we call a light-bulb moment when the hero doctor realizes that it’s not an infection, it’s lupus!
And don’t get me started on superhero movies. Every third act is exactly the same: the destruction of a city block by battling creatures, cars and buses going this way and that—and in nearly every picture there’s a woman pushing a baby stroller and pointing with terror to the sky, followed by scenes of destruction, buttoned up by returning to the mother and child who are okay and being gently set back down by a superhero who can fly.
You’re telling me AI can’t read every screenwriting manual, watch every episode of Law & Order and House, and deliver a really good version of its own? Have I told you that the robot baby actually squirms?
One last point: As of February 2025, the soap operas still on the air are General Hospital (ABC), The Young and the Restless (CBS), and The Bold and the Beautiful (CBS). It would be a violation of their fiduciary duty if the producers of those shows didn’t immediately replace their writing staff with AI-enabled software. Were I a shareholder, I would demand it. Margins are being squeezed all over the entertainment industry, and it’s imperative that costs are cut wherever and however possible.
The story of the robot baby ends, to be honest, in an incomplete victory for the artificial infant. When it comes to close-ups, the robot baby just doesn’t cut it. So we settled on a robot baby/live baby hybrid solution. We shot a small number of scenes with a real baby—cheaper, but more complicated—and then did the rest with the robot baby, which we only rented for a few hours, not even long enough to need a new battery pack.
But I could swear that the real baby saw the robot baby and quickly figured out the economics of the situation and knew that he had better really sell the material or it’d be an all-robot situation. So when the real baby was on camera, there was no fussing or unpleasantness. He really delivered. Which is a solution that probably works in life, too. For now.
Photo: Michael Parmelee/NBC, © 2016 NBCUniversal Media, LLC. All rights reserved.
We want to hear your thoughts about this article. Click here to send a letter to the editor.
