Emma Thompson tells AI writing tools to “f— off”

Oscar-winning screenwriter Emma Thompson unleashed a profanity-laden rant against AI on “The Late Show,” telling artificial intelligence tools to “just f— off” when they offer to rewrite her work. The outburst highlights growing resistance among Hollywood’s creative elite to AI encroachment in their craft, with Thompson joining directors like Guillermo del Toro in vocally rejecting the technology.

What they’re saying: Thompson expressed “intense irritation” with AI’s intrusion into her writing process, particularly Microsoft Word’s AI features.

• “When I’ve written something, I will put it into a Word document. And recently, the Word document is constantly saying, ‘Would you like me to rewrite that for you?’ And so I end up just saying, ‘I don’t need you to rewrite what I’ve just written, will you fuck off?! Just fuck off!’ I’m so annoyed.”
• Thompson emphasized her belief in “a connection between the brain and the hand,” explaining why she writes “long hand on a pad” before transferring to digital format.

Past tech troubles: Thompson recounted a nightmare scenario from her Oscar-winning “Sense & Sensibility” screenplay that reinforced her distrust of technology.

• “When I was finishing ‘Sense & Sensibility’ on the computer, I came back from the bathroom to find that it had changed the entire script into hieroglyphs,” she recalled.
• The incident required eight hours of recovery work with Stephen Fry, a British actor and writer, ultimately producing “one long sentence” that had to be completely redone.

The bigger picture: Thompson joins a growing chorus of Oscar-winning filmmakers actively rejecting AI in creative processes.

• Director Guillermo del Toro recently told NPR he would “rather die” than use AI in filmmaking, stating: “AI, particularly generative AI — I am not interested, nor will I ever be interested.”
• Del Toro, whose “Frankenstein” arrives on Netflix November 7, added: “I’m 61, and I hope to be able to remain uninterested in using it at all until I croak.”

Why this matters: The vocal opposition from established, award-winning creatives signals potential resistance to AI adoption in Hollywood’s creative workflows, particularly as the technology becomes more aggressive in suggesting “improvements” to human-created content.