‘Bogeyman of the moment’: Why every TV show seems to have the same villain
Television writers are increasingly portraying artificial intelligence as a common villain in their shows. This trend reflects concerns about AI's impact on the industry, as it begins to replace traditional writing roles. Programs like Hacks and Morning Wars highlight the potential dangers of AI in creative processes.
- ▪An Australian screenwriter suspected AI was used to provide generic feedback on his script.
- ▪AI has started to replace entry-level positions in TV writing rooms, raising concerns among veteran writers.
- ▪Shows like Hacks and Morning Wars depict AI as a villain, exploring its sinister implications.
Sydney Morning Herald publishes from Australia and files mainly under world. We currently carry 3,705 of its stories.
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Story provenance
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| Original publisher | The Sydney Morning Herald |
| Canonical URL | https://www.smh.com.au/culture/tv-and-radio/bogeyman-of-the-moment-why-every-tv-show-seems-to-have-the-same-villain-20260527-p601bb.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed |
| Publication time | Fri, 29 May 2026 06:00:00 +1000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-28T20:05:07.625Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-28T20:05:07.625Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | OoqLCoX2XTka |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at The Sydney Morning Herald.