How an AI playwright is saving lives in Scotland’s prisons

“I remembered the person I used to want to become. Someone sophisticated, witty, charming… maybe I’ll just never be that kind of person. Maybe I’ve ruined my chances, I’ve ruined my brain.”

How do these lines strike you? Can you imagine an actor or actress reciting them in a hushed theatre, perhaps? You might be surprised to learn that they were written with the help of artificial intelligence.

Across the world, there are growing anxieties about the pace and capabilities of AI – but used correctly, it can provide major benefits to charities like the one I am involved with, Creative Change Collective.

We use it in our pioneering programme, ‘Anonymous Drama’, which we deliver in several prisons across Scotland as well as in drug and alcohol recovery groups. I describe it as being like drama therapy for people who usually aren’t interested in drama or therapy.

Blending fiction and real life

The programme is for people in recovery and those in the criminal justice system, using drama therapy-type activities to support their mental health. Participants develop fictional group characters in an anonymous setting, where no one knows what is based on real-life experiences and what is pure fiction. They use these characters to explore parts of themselves that they may not be comfortable discussing anywhere else.

During the sessions, they also create content for a group script consisting of related monologues, sketches, and spoken word. Volunteers from each group are given the opportunity to read this script at a live event for friends, family, and support staff, as well as invited guests.

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The line you read at the beginning of this article is taken directly from one of these scripts. But what does this have to do with AI? At first, the delivery team, like me, came from the arts. Then, I decided to give volunteers, usually people who had already completed a programme and may still be in recovery, the opportunity to become paid team members.

Outside their comfort zone

For these people, most of whom have no professional experience with character or story development, a blank script staring back at them could be intimidating. Some of the session ‘hot seat’ and improvisation exercises were way outside their comfort zone.

This is why we started to explore ways that AI and ChatGPT could be used to support our delivery teams. The results have been outstanding. Simply put, AI removes barriers so that people with no previous experience can develop characters and scripts, using material they have collected inside this uniquely anonymous environment.

All delivery team members go through induction and training with a step-by-step session plan that includes how to get the best out of ChatGPT for this very specific use. ChatGPT takes all the character exploration work, which is completely unique to each group, and uses it to produce content in any genre or medium we need. Humans then decide whether to use it, delete it, or edit it.

AI has no ego

It’s as if every delivery team has their own playwright, poet and director in the room with them – and, unlike working with humans, the content from AI doesn’t come with intellectual property or ego factors to consider.

Because the material being fed into ChatGPT comes from the participants, the end product is shaped by them and their unique experiences. AI just supports the middle part of the creative process.

The amount used by each group varies. Generally, for most of our live events – usually 45 to 60 minutes of material – around 30 per cent of the script comes from participants, 30 per cent from the delivery team, and the rest from AI. Some teams choose not to use it, but it is there for those who need it. Clearly, there is controversy and debate around AI and what it is used for, but for Anonymous Drama, AI is having a transformative impact.

A life-saver

Unlike a traditional drama group, our focus isn’t the script, or even the live event. The priority will always be the positive impact on the mental health and emotional well-being of our participants during the two-hour sessions.

If the programmes could only be delivered by people with a background in drama and therapy, we would simply have fewer groups. When we widened the delivery team to include people with lived experience, the possibilities became greater and the impact on recovery and desistance – moving away from crime –increased. For us, AI is helping us to save lives.

Embracing the possibilities

We are also only scratching the surface. My intention is to migrate the current session plan for groups and a workbook for individuals into an app. One feature could include an in-app mentor in avatar form.

It would be someone’s biggest fan and champion offering encouragement when it is most needed. Once Anonymous Drama is running in an app form, the non-artificial reality is this: our only restrictions stem from our willingness to embrace the possibilities.

I know people worry about AI leading to redundancies, but I see how it will help create new jobs and new opportunities. As a charity leader, I only have good things to say about AI. It’s helping with some of our heavy lifting internally, and it’s helping keep people in recovery and out of the criminal justice system. That can only be a good thing.

Mark MacNicol is project director of Creative Change Collective. For more information about the charity’s work, please visit www.ccc.scot. Sample session links can be found on social media @cccscot.