Computers don't cry during sad stories, but they can tell when we will. Sunspring debuted at the SCI-FI LONDON film festival in 2016. Set in a dystopian world with mass unemployment, the movie attracted many fans, with one viewer describing it as amusing but strange. But the most notable aspect of the film involves its creation: an artificial-intelligence (AI) bot wrote Sunspring's screenplay. "Maybe machines will replace human storytellers, just like self-driving cars could take over the roads."

The creative process will be democratized by artificial intelligence. All of Sud's workshop hypotheticals were based on analysis of where tech trends …