Jack Thorne says some scriptwriters are using AI to cheat and wants a law to stop it

Key points

• Jack Thorne, co-writer of Netflix hit Adolescence, publicly accused some fellow scriptwriters of secretly using AI to generate scripts.
• Thorne called for laws banning undisclosed AI use in professional scriptwriting.
• He said AI models "steal" from the creative industry and that writers must be "squeaky clean" in response.
• Thorne also wrote Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, the stage adaptation that filled theatres around the world.

Jack Thorne's short list of credits would make most writers envious: the Netflix drama Adolescence, one of the most talked-about British shows in recent memory, and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, the stage play that has filled theatres around the world. When he speaks about the writing profession, people in it tend to listen.

Speaking to The Guardian, Thorne said flatly that some scriptwriters are using AI "to cheat." He named no individuals, but the accusation was pointed: colleagues using AI tools, software that can generate polished text from a short prompt, and passing the result off as their own.

What is Thorne actually asking for?

He wants a law. Specifically, legislation that would make it illegal to use AI secretly when writing a script for professional hire without telling the people paying for it.

This is a narrower ask than it sounds. Thorne isn't saying writers can't experiment. He's saying that if a production company commissions a human writer and pays for a human script, it deserves to know if a machine wrote the first draft or the whole thing. Transparency, not prohibition.

His stronger complaint targets the AI companies themselves. He argued that large language models, the AI systems trained on vast amounts of text that power tools like ChatGPT, were built by ingesting scripts and creative work without authors' permission. That, he said, amounts to theft.

"Writers need to be squeaky clean," he said, framing it as professional integrity at a moment when AI can convincingly imitate human writing.

Does this affect ordinary viewers?

Not directly, not yet. But the tension matters to anyone who watches television or buys a theatre ticket.

If undisclosed AI writing becomes common, production companies could cut writer fees while audiences assume they're watching work that came from a person's experience and imagination. The output might look identical. The process behind it would not be.

Writers' guilds in the US fought hard to include AI restrictions in their 2023 contract negotiations. British writers have no equivalent deal, which is partly why Thorne is pressing for legislation rather than waiting on industry agreements. The UK government's approach to AI and creative rights has drawn scrutiny before: we covered Britain's medicine regulator calling for a patient right to know when AI is involved in their care on 13 September 2026, a principle that maps neatly onto what Thorne is demanding for audiences.

Complaints about AI and creative theft are common. A named, high-profile writer demanding specific legislation is harder for policymakers to ignore, and that's what makes this worth watching.