By Jack Kyle ’24

THE ROUNDUP

With the release of the sixth season of Netflix’s anthology series, Black Mirror, came a storm of questions surrounding the use of Artificial Intelligence as the future unfolds.

The very first episode of the new season titled “Joan is Awful” takes a look at a world where AI can in fact create entire television shows simply because users unknowingly signed over their rights to their name, image and likeness. And those scoffing at how unrealistic a possibility this is need only to look at a viral marketing strategy from Netflix.

In a promotional campaign for the show, Netflix created a streaming website called Streamberry, where users could upload an image of themselves in order for a chance to appear in a marketing campaign. What most users who didn’t read the fine print realized is that their pictures were being posted on billboards across the United Kingdom, which they agreed to by signing up for the service.

This episode isn’t the only one that deals with the future of AI. The Season 2 episode “Be Right Back” revolves around using the technology in order to let grieving family members recreate their deceased relatives to deal with their loss. 

The relatable characters in unbelievable situations make the show feel so realistic. The difficult and human choices that they make let the viewer immerse themselves in the episode alongside the characters.

The series is an anthology, each episode being completely independent from one another, which makes it extremely easy for viewers to watch at random. Some episodes for people wanting to get into the series are “USS Callister,” “White Christmas” and “Shut up and Dance.”

In all of these instances, and in the rest of the series, the decisions that people make with their technology causes their eventual downfall, which sends the message that humanity is the real reason why disasters end up happening. Even the series title represents the “black mirror” of our phone screens, making us take a look at our use of technology .

Series creator Charlie Brooker said in an interview with Empire magazine that he tried to use AI to write an episode, but said that the technology wasn’t able to produce original thought

“All it’s done is look up all the synopses of Black Mirror episodes, and sort of mush them together,” said Brooker. “Then if you dig a bit more deeply you go, ‘Oh, there’s not actually any real original thought here.’”

In reality, none of the dystopian futures that we see throughout the series come to fruition because technology itself takes over the world. Rather, it is humanity’s own hubris and their eventual overdependence on AI that causes it to become problematic.