Truth REVEALED about whether Stranger Things creators used ChatGPT to write its final season

The truth has finally been revealed about whether or not the Duffer Brothers used AI for the final season of Stranger Things.

On Monday, Netflix released a documentary titled One Last Adventure: The Making of Stranger Things 5, which showcases a behind-the-scenes insight into production on the final season.

The final season concluded on New Year’s Day after being on air for almost a decade, but the episodes received mixed reviews from fans and critics. The two-hour-long finale currently has a score of 7.6 on IMDb, one of the lowest in Stranger Things history.

After the One Last Adventure documentary was released on Netflix, fans quickly took to social media to speculate if the show’s creators, the Duffer Brothers, had used ChatGPT to help them write the scripts.

In one screenshot taken from the documentary, fans theorised that they could see three ChatGPT tabs open on a laptop, with one user on X writing: “Stranger Things season five brought to you by ChatGPT”.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, documentary filmmaker Martina Radwan has now addressed the allegations.

When asked if Matt and Ross Duffer used ChatGPT in her presence, Martina responded: “I mean, are we even sure they had ChatGPT open?”

“Well, there’s a lot of chatter where [social media users] are like, ‘We don’t really know, but we’re assuming.’ But to me it’s like, doesn’t everybody have it open, to just do quick research?” she continued.

Martina went on to question: “How can you possibly write a storyline with 19 characters and use ChatGPT, I don’t even understand.”

The filmmaker went on to note that the allegations about the use of ChatGPT are just speculation.

“Again, first of all, nobody has actually proved that it was open. That’s like having your iPhone next to your computer while you’re writing a story. We just use these tools … while multitasking. So there’s a lot going on all the time, every time,” she explained.

“What I find heartbreaking is everybody loves the show, and suddenly we need to pick it apart,” she admitted.

Martina was then definitively asked if she witnessed “an unethical use of generative-AI in the writers room”.

She replied: “No, of course not. I witnessed creative exchanges. I witnessed conversation. People think ‘writers room’ means people are sitting there writing. No, it’s a creative exchange. It’s story development.”

She concluded: And, of course, you go places in your creative mind and then you come back [to the script]. I think being in the writers room is such a privilege and such a gift to be able to witness that.”

In the documentary, the Duffer Brothers confessed that they had “pressure” to finish the script for the final episode, especially as they started shooting season five before all of its scripts had been completed.

They stated: “We were getting hammered constantly by production and by Netflix for episode eight.”

The Duffer Brothers added: “It was the most difficult writing circumstance we’ve ever found ourselves in, not just because of the pressure to make sure the script was good, but because there was never so much noise at the same time.”

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