The Notebook makes you yearn for love. Interstellar leaves you dumbfounded. The Killing Fields makes you feel for a whole nation’s struggle.

The greatest movies are so successful because they are able to create an emotional connection with audiences. Watching a movie makes you feel. Whether it be laughter, terror, lust, or confusion, a movie changes your state of mind.

In addition to obvious elements such as acting, directing, or cinematography, no film can be great without great writing (just ask any Game of Thrones fan who watched season 8). Good writers understand human nature, allowing them to pull at heartstrings in the most effective ways.

And sometimes it doesn’t even take creativity to do so. If you’ve seen a lot of movies, read a lot of books, or binged a lot of TV, you know that storylines can often see formulaic. The guy gets the girl. The team wins the championship. The hero beats the bad guy.

But this leads us to an interesting question. Does a writer have to be human to write a touching story? What if a robot could learn how to follow these patterns that are found across thousands of films. Could it write a good movie?

That’s what inspired the creators of Sunspring. It’s a short film made at a sci-fi film festival. It has a human cast, including Emmy-nominated Thomas Middleditch, a human director, and human producers. However, it was written by–you guessed it–a robot.

NYU artificial intelligence researcher Ross Goodwin worked with Oscar Sharp, a BAFTA-nominated director, to create this revolutionary work. At 9 minutes long (including a song), you can find the whole video on Youtube or the Ars Technica (the original publisher) website.

To summarize briefly, three (possibly four) characters are on a spaceship and are arguing about what seems to be something about protocol or love. Out of nowhere, a warp hole opens up in the room and a song plays, segueing into one character’s monologue. The premise is briefly mentioned as “In a future with mass unemployment, young people are forced to sell blood.”

By just reading the screenplay, the movie makes no sense (you can read it here). The dialogue is incomprehensible. At least the plot kind of exists, for there’s a vague inkling of romance between characters (maybe even a love triangle?) and an internal conflict in the main character’s, H’s, mind.

After watching the film four times, some things still seemed out of place like H producing an eyeball from his mouth or the warp hole that spontaneously opens up. 

However, watching the movie was surprisingly profound. The actors, Thomas Middleditch, Elisabeth Grey, and Humphrey Ker deliver amazing performances of nonsensical dialogue. I actually felt suspense as the argument escalated even though I only had a vague idea of what they were arguing about. Elisabeth Grey’s monologue near the end of the film is incredibly profound. Staring directly at you, she bears her heart out to you and the plot starts to make sense.

I’m not sure if the machine was trying to be funny or if it’s just bad at writing, but at some points, I even laughed out loud at the ridiculousness of the dialogue.

Furthermore, Director Oscar Sharp takes some creative liberties given the ambiguity of the screenplay. I don’t want to spoil the film, but he frames the final scene in a way that brings the film full circle.

Given the final result of the film, my conclusion is that robot-produced films are far from becoming mainstream. The screenplay went all over the place, presenting inconsistent dialogue and random jumps in plot. What makes the film work are the human aspects. The casts’ stellar acting. The director’s creative interpretations. The cinematography.

To answer our original question: Does a writer have to be human to write a touching story?

Right now? Definitely yes. In the future? Who knows.