Quantum Leap: Computer programs could soon churn out books, movies and music

As part of a film competition in 2016, filmmaker Oscar Sharp and creative technologist Ross Goodwin fed a neural network a whole lot of movie scripts and gave it some cues, including the title and the setting. The screenplay that the artificial intelligence (AI) program produced was turned into a short film called Sunspring, starring Silicon Valley star Thomas Middleditch and directed by Sharp.

The movie, with its disjointed dialogue and ambiguous characters, does not make much sense. But how it came about was both alarming and exciting. Two years later, Sharp and Goodwin decided to allow the AI, which was given the name Jetson before it decided to call itself Benjamin, to write, edit and direct Zone Out with images of stars, including Middleditch, and scenes from old films. The result is even more bizarre than Sunspring.