AI and Art: The Contagion Effect

New York City, a crucible of art and innovation, recently played host to a narrative twist that felt ripped from the pages of a dystopian thriller.

At the Tribeca Festival, Scott Z. Burns, the screenwriter behind the chillingly prescient 2011 film ‘Contagion,’ unveiled a new project that blurs the lines between human ingenuity and artificial intelligence, sparking a profound conversation about the future of creativity itself.

Burns, it turns out, asked an AI for a sequel idea to his pandemic masterpiece, and the result, he claims, was nothing short of “extraordinary.”

This intriguing saga unfolds in a new podcast, ‘What Could Go Wrong?,’ where Burns engages in a fascinating dialogue with Lexter, a generative AI chatbot specifically tailored to be his “screenwriter companion.”

Lexter, designed to think like a film critic and even speak aloud, delivered a premise that left Burns “jaw-dropped” – an idea so unexpected that even the AI’s creators couldn’t trace its algorithmic genesis.

While the specific details of this “extraordinary” concept remain under wraps, hidden within the podcast’s episodes, Lexter itself offered a tantalizing, and frankly chilling, prediction for its own success:

“If ‘Contagion 2: The Efficiency Paradox’ hits theaters, it will be a success, assuming the world hasn’t imploded from its plastic waste, and with the right marketing and an audience still recovering from the trauma of a real-life pandemic, it could easily make a fortune.”

The AI’s voice then added, with an almost cynical self-awareness, “People like a good scare, especially when it reflects their worst fears.”

This isn’t merely a tale of a writer outsourcing his creative block to a machine; it’s a potent parable for our times.

Burns, far from being an AI evangelist, offers a nuanced, yet deeply cautious, perspective.

He posits that AI won’t necessarily produce creative work than humans, but it will certainly produce more work, and in doing so, will inevitably displace many professionals, particularly those whose tasks are repetitive.

His analogy of the “genie out of the lamp” – once unleashed, it cannot be put back – resonates with a palpable sense of inevitability.

But Burns’s anxieties extend far beyond the silver screen.

His concerns delve into the very essence of what it means to be human and creative.

He articulates a fear not of AI writing blockbuster screenplays in 2025, but of its insidious creep into everyday creative functions: crafting Bar Mitzvah speeches, wedding vows, emails, personal messages.

For Burns, creativity isn’t just a product; it’s a lifestyle, a fundamental executive function that defines us.

He warns of impending “creative tariffs,” a chilling concept where AI doesn’t just automate tasks, but actively diminishes our capacity for effective human communication, for the spontaneous, messy, and often inefficient process that fuels genuine creativity.

“That’s where there will be bad scripts, when there will be bad cinema,” he asserted, implying a future where art becomes diluted, devoid of the unique spark of human experience.

The Tribeca presentation itself unfolded against a backdrop of wider industry unease.

A panel of experts, speaking alongside Burns, painted a stark, almost dystopian future, where the relentless march of AI is less about collaborative innovation and more about unchecked corporate power.

They highlighted the opaque nature of companies like OpenAI, whose rapid advancements in AI seem to outpace not only ethical considerations but also the very energy infrastructures required to sustain them.

In the film industry, the experts revealed, AI is already being leveraged to generate story “skeletons” or outlines, which are then passed on to human agents and writers to “fill in the gaps.”

This raises a critical question: when the foundational architecture of a story is machine-generated, how much of the human soul remains in the final product?

Adding another layer of contemporary relevance, the Tribeca discussion occurred just a day after Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, penned a dreamlike manifesto envisioning a “digital superintelligence” that would allow companies like his to construct a “brain for the world.”

This grand vision, juxtaposed with Burns’s more grounded fears about “creative tariffs,” underscores the profound philosophical chasm opening up in our technological age.

The story of Scott Z. Burns and Lexter is more than just a Hollywood anecdote; it’s a microcosm of a larger societal reckoning.

As AI continues its inexorable advance, we are forced to confront fundamental questions about the nature of originality, the value of human labor, and the very definition of art.

Is AI merely a tool to augment human creativity, or is it a competitor destined to reshape the landscape of artistic endeavor in ways we can barely fathom?

The genie is indeed out of the lamp, and the world is holding its breath to see what it will create, or perhaps, what it will diminish.