While I’ve never been a fan of holiday-specific lessons (especially Hallowe’en), I couldn’t help but think of how to use this hilarious take on a horror movie plot. It’s written by AI bots after analysing hours and hours of footage. It’s reminiscent of an old Google Translate experiment I used to do before it got better at translating. So, here’s a quick activity suggestion for your Hallowe’en / Day of the Dead classes.
Activity with genre plot elements and AI language
- Put students in groups to discuss what elements are in different genres of movie plots. Agree on common plot elements.
- Show this video (above) without any preamble about AI writing it.
- Discuss in groups if elements of horror are all included.
- Create and give transcript to students. Play the video again.
- Point out example areas where lines sound strange, as identifiably written by an AI bot (e.g. “I want you to be less alive. <– the grammar is fine; the meaning is achieved; but …. ). Discuss why together.
- Students look through the transcript and watch video on their devices. They negotiate other examples in sections and make suggestions for change. Everyone discusses as a class.
- In their groups, students select one of the genres they discussed initially, and write an “AI” language movie script/summary for their genre from the beginning.
- Give to another group. They first determine genre and highlight why. They give feedback about plot elements that may be strange or missing for that genre.
- Give it to another group. That group suggest ways to modify voice through language choice to make the script sound more authentic.
- Give back to original group for review. Original group creates a table of “AI” version to compare with “authentic” version.
