Emma Thompson Criticizes AI Interference in Writing

On The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Oscar-winning actor and screenwriter Emma Thompson said she feels "intense irritation" about artificial intelligence meddling in her creative process and said she prefers writing longhand to preserve a "connection between the brain and the hand." She said that when she types drafts into Word the program—appearing to reference AI tools like Microsoft Copilot—repeatedly offers to rewrite her work, prompting her to tell it, "I don't need you to rewrite what I've just written — will you fuck off." Thompson recalled a past tech disaster finishing Sense and Sensibility when a computer garbled her script into "hieroglyphs" and Stephen Fry spent eight hours recovering it into one long sentence, forcing her to redo the work. Colbert joked she could show her Oscar to the computer, to which she replied it "wouldn't care." Her remarks come amid broader industry anxiety about AI's role, including concerns from SAG-AFTRA and other performers, and India Today notes her new series Down Cemetery Road premiered on Apple TV on October 29.