"Black Mirror"'s Creator Reveals Season 6 Almost Included an AI-Written Episode

"Black Mirror" is getting meta in season six. On May 31, Netflix released the full trailer for the new season, which is five episodes long, and it gives us our best look yet at the new disorienting, stand-alone films.

In "Joan is Afraid," "Schitt's Creek" star Annie Murphy stars as Joan, who opens a streaming service (that looks a lot like Netflix) only to see that Salma Hayek stars in a prestige drama about her life. Meanwhile, in "Loch Henry," a nature documentary turns into a twisted crime drama. And in "Mazey Day," a paparazzi goes to the limits to get a photo of a starlet. But the eerie trailer teases even more mystery with episodes titled "Beyond the Sea" and "Demon 79" — which look more uncanny than they sound.

"Black Mirror" season six marks the first batch of episodes to be released after a nearly four-year hiatus. The mind-bending sci-fi anthology series premiered season five in June 2019 with only three one-hour-plus-long installments. But season six welcomes a new cast that includes Aaron Paul, Josh Hartnett, Paapa Essiedu, Kate Mara, and Zazie Beetz.

In the season preview, Netflix calls the episodes "films," so it looks like each installment will be cinematic in scope. Fans hope "Black Mirror" will follow the same pattern as its last season, which showcased some of its most explosive episodes to date — including the infamous "Striking Vipers" chapter, starring Anthony Mackie, Nicole Beharie, and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, and Miley Cyrus's "Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too."

According to cocreator Charlie Brooker, that just may be the case as he got even more daring when writing the latest installment of his tech-inspired series. Apparently, in speaking to Empire Magazine, he "toyed around with ChatGPT" to see if the AI technology was capable of writing a "Black Mirror" film that measured up to past episodes.

"The first thing I did was type 'generate Black Mirror episode,'" he told the outlet in an interview published on June 6. "It [came] up with something that, at first glance, reads plausibly, but on second glance . . . All it's done is look up all the synopses of 'Black Mirror' episodes and sort of mush them together. Then if you dig a bit more deeply you go, 'Oh, there's not actually any real original thought here.'"

The future of "Black Mirror" was shaky for a while after Brooker told Radio Times Magazine in 2020 that he wasn't sure viewers would have an appetite for the show's dark content in the middle of the pandemic. "At the moment, I don't know what stomach there would be for stories about societies falling apart, so I'm not working away on one of those," he said. "I'm sort of keen to revisit my comic skill set, so I've been writing scripts aimed at making myself laugh."

"Black Mirror" originally debuted on UK broadcaster Channel 4 before Netflix picked up the series after season two. Since then, the show has become a landmark on the streamer, so its return was inevitable — especially after Netflix invested in Broke and Bones, the new production company from the creators of "Black Mirror," Deadline reported.

Ahead, here's everything we know about "Black Mirror" season six, from the new cast and latest trailer to the plots and release date.