Whether you’re a longtime fan or you couldn’t care less, it’s hard to deny how much skill — and blood — goes into professional wrestling.
Though plot lines are scripted ahead of time and the impacts are staged, the physicality is very real. At its highest level, pro wrestling is basically a decades-long soap opera acted out by highly-trained stuntmen, with improvisational elements in which the audience’s reaction and real-life injuries can upend the plot in a moment’s notice.
Pro wrestling is a global entertainment phenomenon, with traditions ranging from the Lucha Libre of Mexico to the Puroresu of Japan. But one of its largest wrestling markets has long been the United States, where for decades the spectacle has been dominated by Worldwide Wrestling Entertainment (WWE.)
Though WWE has been shrouded in controversy in recent years, it’s also often delivered stupefying feats of red-blooded artistry, like when Steve Austin delivered a Stone Cold Stunner to then-CEO Vince McMahon, or the time when Hulk Hogan drove a semi truck into an ambulance carrying Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. (And who can forget a certain Hell in a Cell match from 1998?)
It’s safe to say these unhinged creative moments have defined the explosive American professional wrestling. But if the WWE’s new chief creative officer — the former wrestler Paul “Triple H” Levesque — has his way, those high-octane twists could soon be dictated by an AI script writer.
As first reported by the Wrestling Observer, Triple H has brought on Cyrus Kowsari as WWE’s senior director of creative strategy, where he’s been tasked with overseeing the company’s transition to AI-based storytelling.
In a creative meeting back in September, Triple H reportedly introduced Kowsari to writers and producers as someone who would “lead WWE’s transition into AI-based storytelling and integrate AI into creative services like video and graphics.” He added that it was an “inevitable shift” in wrestling entertainment, according to the WO.
Kowsari will also act as the White House liaison to the WWE, mirroring Triple H’s mind-boggling appointment to president Donald Trump’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition. (The WWE is arguably the paragon of modern-day human growth hormone abuse, which has led to an outsized number of tragic deaths.)
To date, the WWE has already tried two AI writing experiments. The first, the WO reports, was a previously undisclosed system which was scrapped after it “couldn’t understand wrestling storylines.” The second was a partnership with a platform called Writer AI, which was fed a heaping dose of human-written WWE scripts, but hasn’t quite been able to wrap its code around the tricky businesses of wrestling kayfabe.
According to the WO, that AI script writer “pitched a storyline where Bobby Lashley, who I guess AI thought was still with the company, could come back as a wrestler who was obsessed with Japanese culture and history. But the feeling is once bugs are worked out that AI will begin to have major impact on storyline direction.”
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