The Filmmaker Who Says AI Is Reparations

Willonius Hatcher was looking for a way in. He’d tried just about everything to break into Hollywood, and because there no longer exists a traditional entry point into its hallowed pantheon of performers—we can thank the internet for doing away with all notions of conventional success—the pursuit of it sometimes felt like a mirage. He could see it, and he knew he could get there because he believed in his talent, only the closer he got the farther the door seemed. He’d done the stand-up circuit, short film work, sketches, even video editing. None of them got him fully in the door. Then Covid-19 hit—and everything changed. “When the pandemic started, I was like, OK, all of this is done. Let me focus on screenwriting. I can get a check. I can still be creative,” Hatcher, 39, told me from his Palm Beach residence when we spoke by Zoom. He doubled down on his script writing, constructing epic worlds of his own, joining writer programs and later creating a web series. By then, generative AI was taking off, and Hatcher, who was an early advocate of ChatGPT, became proficient in two programs. Although he relies on his writing to build...