TV Writers Tackle AI Fears in Shows Like 'Hacks' and 'The Comeback'

In the latest episode of Hacks, Jean Smart’s legendary comedian Deborah Vance is approached by a potential investor who asks if he can use her standup library for an AI comedy tool. What follows is an episode that wrestles with the moral and ethical implications of the technology before Deborah ultimately rejects the offer.

“Why are you trying to optimize the creative process?” Deborah tells the investor in the episode. “I mean, that’s one of the things we’ve actually figured out.”

The show, and its writers, might as well have been speaking to the Hollywood and tech executives who have embraced the technology. While AI continues to be a dirty word in Hollywood, it’s also fertile ground for TV writers who have incorporated society’s — and their own — anxieties about it in a number of shows, from Hacks to The Comeback.

AI is being discussed in the medical field, Hollywood, schools and between everyday people through characters on TV. TV shows have always served as a medium for mainstream audiences to be exposed to new ideas — The Jeffersons represented affluent Black families on screen, Ellen DeGeneres came out publicly on her ’90s sitcom and Gilmore Girls commented on the wonders of Google in the 2000s. Even The Comeback — a show that has one of the most nuanced and interesting conversations about this new technology — explored how the rise of reality TV would impact Hollywood as a whole during its first season in 2005.

In 2026, that spotlight is now on AI.

“Hollywood has always followed the money, and the money means who’s watching. When we all thought reality TV was the end of narrative, that was real,” The Comeback co-creator Michael Patrick King told TheWrap. “Instead, it just became a wing on a house called television, and we went on to have what is called the second golden age of television in narrative. So we don’t know what’s coming. We do know that [AI] is here.”

These anxieties aren’t new. During the WGA strike three years ago, TV writers rallied around AI protections in fear that the emerging technology would compromise their ethics and take away their jobs. While they eventually won more AI guardrails in their new contract with studios, many in Hollywood still feel a looming threat from this technology.

TheWrap spoke with writers and showrunners about their decisions to weave AI into their storytelling, and their choices ranged from channeling their characters’ concerns about the technology to simply finding the most relevant way to move their stories forward.

AI and Comedy

Hacks co-creator Jen Statsky admitted taking AI on was “scary” due to its changing nature, but said it ultimately felt true to the conversations Deborah and Hannah Einbinder’s comedy writer character Ava might have.

Throughout the five seasons of the HBO Max comedy, Hacks has relied on a dynamic with Deborah offering an older generation’s perspective on pressing issues like climate change and Ava countering with a more progressive attitude from her millennial perspective.