Until recently, the most reliable source of clever thought experiments about ascendant technologies on television was the Netflix series “Black Mirror.” The anthology drama débuted in 2011, and its creator, Charlie Brooker, quickly established his interest in the promise and perils of artificial intelligence. The 2023 episode “Joan Is Awful”—which posits a nightly, A.I.-generated series that mines a normal woman’s experiences and then villainizes her for viewers’ enjoyment, with a simulation of the actress Salma Hayek in the starring role—became a talking point during the Hollywood strikes as a worst-case scenario of studio indifference to ethics and quality. One union member called it a “documentary of the future”: the kind of project a deep-pocketed streamer like Netflix might aim for

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