David Hasselhoff stars in a new short film, called It's No Game, in which his dialogue was entirely written by an AI called Benjamin.

With the prospect of automation claiming many people's jobs, it's no wonder why everybody's feeling a bit wary of the new technology. However, up until recently, creatives have been feeling relatively safe. It's not feasible to think that artificial intelligence could ever replicate the artistic nature of humankind. Yet, it looks like even the creatives aren't safe.

There have been stories of AI platforms replacing people in marketing, Coca-Cola for example is going to see whether AI can make better adverts than humans. In Japan, AI has already begun directing commercials, which have been positively received by adverting executives. Now, we have a new short film, starring David Hasselhoff, called 'It's No Game', in which his dialogue was entirely written by an AI scriptwriter called Benjamin.

The dialogue itself is a bit jumbled, and doesn't make much sense. What director Oscar Sharp and AI researcher Ross Goodwin did was create a neural network and fed it some lines of dialogue from science-fiction films. The AI, called Benjamin, then used all of this data to write a script for a film called 'Sunspring', which you can find on Ars Technica Videos' YouTube channel, featuring Silicon Valley's Thomas Middleditch.

Yet, with 'It's No Game', Benjamin went ever further down the AI rabbit hole, by actually incorporating its previous film into its plot. In 'It's No Game', 'Sunspring' was a world-changing film that lead to the AI actually being able to take over people's actions and speech, by making them recite lines from old movies.

To sum it all up, a director and AI researcher developed an AI which wrote a mad science-fiction script, and they then got it to write another one, incorporating even more self-aware references. It all ends with David Hasselhoff sitting on the floor in his iconic red Baywatch swimming trunks, looking straight at the camera and delivering one of the best, if incomprehensible, monologues of his career.

"I don't know who the hell I am. I don't know why the hell I am. I want to be a man. I've got to get out of here." Could Hasselhoff's lines be a pile of nonsense, or is it Benjamin reaching out to us, telling us that he wants to be a real human? Who knows...