AI Doesn’t Want To Read Your Screenplay

Note: This essay was entirely written by the human writer named Gordy Hoffman.

I run and judge a screenplay competition that receives thousands of scripts each year, and we give written notes on every submission to us.

For years, we get responses from writers after they have received notes——I loved my feedback, I hated my feedback—–something to that effect.

Now in the age of artificial intelligence, it is becoming more frequent that writers claim that AI read their screenplay.

I have observed when the writers claim their screenplays were read and analyzed by AI they usually disagree with the feedback. In fact, they think it’s awful.

No one ever says, “I loved the feedback! Artificial intelligence must have read my screenplay!”

There’s much to discuss about the use of AI to support the work of writers and how they use it to develop stories. I personally do not use it because I work alone.

But what’s clear to me is AI doesn’t want to read my screenplay. It doesn’t care if I write.

Does my laptop care if I turn it on? If I write a movie? If I do a budget?

No.

AI doesn’t want to go to the movies. It doesn’t care about me.

Will it write me a schedule? Will it tell me how many children Ulysses Grant had? Sure.

But it had no childhood.

It doesn’t value time.

It will never grieve. It doesn’t care about home runs. It won’t point at cats wrestling.

So why would it care if you every wrote a word?

We recently had a top agent ask us to send us the best feature we had.

It’s 2025. And the market wants movies.

There is a demand for screenplays because there is a demand from human beings for motion pictures screened in dark theatres that sell popcorn and candy.

People all over the world want emotional stories on giant screens.

We need and want and seek stories which affirm the challenges and joys of our personal existences——we require other people to reflect our lives through movies.

Started with the campfire thousands and thousands of years ago and here we are, summer of 2025, watching Naked Gun and 8 ½, in a theatre, together.

And all because we want to. All of us.

So our little movie writing contest over here will take your script if you’re human and wrote it, and we, human beings, will read it, because we understand that you wanted to write a story and we want to read it. Why?

Because you have a soul, and AI does not.