‘Breaking Bad’ creator’s new show ‘Pluribus’ was emphatically ‘made by humans,’ not AI (techcrunch.com)

Vince Gilligan’s new Apple TV series Pluribus ends with an unusual credit: “This show was made by humans.” The director—best known for Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul—reinforced the point in a Variety interview, bluntly rejecting generative AI as “the world’s most expensive and energy‑intensive plagiarism machine” and arguing AI‑generated content is repetitive and ethically fraught. The on‑screen disclaimer (placed alongside routine notes like animal wranglers) signals an intentional, public distancing from AI use in the show’s production. That choice matters beyond PR: it may set a precedent for creators who want to certify human authorship and push back against generative models that rely on vast datasets of existing works. Gilligan’s critique highlights two technical and policy tensions—how large models are trained on copyrighted material and the significant compute/energy footprint of modern generative systems—which fuel debates about attribution, labor displacement, and transparency in creative industries. Filmmakers could adopt similar disclaimers as part of consumer labeling or industry standards, underscoring a growing movement to define when and how AI should be used (or explicitly not used) in media production.