If you had instructed me ten years in the past that WWE would someday flip to synthetic intelligence to jot down its storylines, I’d have laughed and altered the channel earlier than the following twenty-minute promo arrived.
Yet right here we’re in 2025, with reviews that WWE has launched a brand new senior inventive technique to discover AI-powered storytelling and combine machine studying into its inventive companies.
On paper, it sounds just like the form of soulless company experiment that would crush considered one of leisure’s strangest artwork kinds. I really assume it may make issues higher, and even saying that makes me so unhappy.
Because as a lifelong wrestling fan, I’ve to be sincere: WWE’s inventive route is in shambles. It’s inconsistent, formulaic, and infrequently fully disconnected from the emotional storytelling that made wrestling particular within the first place.
The exhibits look slicker than ever, the expertise is unimaginable, and but the product feels empty. So after I hear that WWE desires to experiment with AI, I do not instantly panic. I sigh, nod and assume: Well, it will possibly’t be a lot worse.
The state of WWE storytelling
Right now, WWE storytelling appears like an limitless loop of half-finished concepts. Disputes start with guarantees, explode for every week, after which fade into the ether. Wrestlers like John Cena, in his retirement profession, go from hero to villain and again to hero with out motivation.
Storylines drag on for months with out objective, and the corporate that when produced such legendary arcs as Austin versus McMahon and even the newer Roman Reigns lineage now appears unable to maneuver ahead with even a easy revenge plot.
The WWE has been by means of turbulence in recent times, from scandals involving its former CEO and sports activities leisure pioneer Vince McMahon, to rising fan frustration with the present product owned by TKO (the identical firm that owns the UFC), which has led to an intense quantity of sponsorships, extremely costly tickets, and main occasions like Wrestlemania heading to Saudi Arabia, the place all the cash is. But even then, by means of 2025 and a serious cope with Netflix, the storytelling remained stellar. It really felt just like the golden period of wrestling and as a fan I used to be very excited to eat the product.
It’s not that WWE lacks inventive expertise, however I feel the system suffocates it. Dozens of writers labor beneath layers of approval, with fixed rewrites and a determined have to please sponsors, broadcasters and shareholders. Each story is a copy-and-paste job of the final, and every promotion sounds prefer it was achieved by means of a spotlight group. There is now not chaos, no spontaneity, no cause to fret, and that’s the reason the concept of AI intervening doesn’t fill me with dread. It fills me with curiosity.
Maybe AI is the reply?
According to the wrestling observerWWE has already dabbled in AI by means of a platform referred to as Writer Inc. Early checks did not go effectively, with one unusual suggestion that includes a returning wrestler as a culture-obsessed model of himself who loves Japanese historical past.
It sounds ridiculous, however the reality is that WWE has authorised worse tales than that previously, and even just lately, there have been some very questionable tales, like The Rock wanting Cody Rhodes’ soul.
Wrestling thrives on long-term storytelling. You can droop disbelief all you need, however you want a world that is smart. When one week’s large dispute is forgotten the following, the emotional funding evaporates. An synthetic intelligence system may clear up this downside. It may monitor continuity, remind writers once they deserted a narrative, and preserve character motivations constant. It would not substitute the human contact, but it surely may cease the fixed inventive reboots that make watching WWE week after week seem to be déjà vu.
There can also be the query of scale. WWE has so many exhibits on tv that it is nearly inconceivable to maintain up with all of them. There’s Raw, SmackDown, NXT, premium dwell occasions like Wrestlemania and Summerslam, and an limitless stream of social content material. And because the variety of weekly exhibits will increase, the standard of storytelling plummets. Don’t get me flawed, most wrestlers are nonetheless incredible within the ring, and top-tier abilities like CM Punk, Iyo Sky, and Rhea Ripley, to call a number of, are nonetheless in a position to seize the magic that made everybody fall in love with the game within the first place.
That stated, AI may assist coordinate the larger image, figuring out which tales are working, which fighters have momentum, and when an angle has run its course. It may act as a inventive assistant, not a substitute, serving to writers preserve monitor of dozens of overlapping arcs in a means that no spreadsheet or group chat can.
I’m an optimist, however there isn’t a cause for my optimism.
Yes, I’m not fully satisfied by my very own concept, however this use of AI fills me with extra pleasure than the tough actuality that WWE may use AI instruments like ChatGPT or Google Gemini to shortly write scripts with little or no human supervision. I’d wish to assume that would not be the case, however then once more, each time I feel WWE will not do one thing specifically (ahem, convey again Brock Lesnar, for instance), I’m left with egg on my face.
And everyone knows that AI can’t replicate feelings; In reality, I’m certain you possibly can’t perceive why CM Punk’s return despatched chills or why Daniel Bryan’s underdog story labored so completely. Wrestling is all about human connection, crowd vitality, and real-time drama salesmanship, and I do not assume any algorithm can perceive that.
Then it turns into a matter of probability: extra of the identical with out AI or the hope that WWE will tactfully implement this new expertise and enhance its personal storytelling. I want I may say that I really consider AI is the reply to a greater model of WWE in 2025, however I do not assume these working the exhibits actually care. Today, WWE is all about multi-million greenback sponsorships, powerbombing by means of the Slim-Jim Table, and actively doing something that makes incoherent sense.
If it really believed WWE would do the precise factor for followers, then the AI may use mountains of knowledge from a long time of crowd reactions, scores, ticket gross sales, and social metrics to kind a greater product. AI may assist the corporate use that data to inform higher tales. You may analyze when audiences lose curiosity, when a heel flip generates pleasure, or when nostalgia fatigue units in.
Oddly sufficient, AI may assist WWE rediscover what made it particular. If a machine can do not forget that Cody Rhodes nonetheless desires to “finish the story,” possibly it will possibly remind the corporate that long-term storytelling actually issues. If an algorithm can monitor fan curiosity, maybe it will possibly immediate inventive groups to cease making the identical match for six weeks in a row.
I by no means thought I’d say it, however possibly it is time for WWE to embrace the machines. Not to switch the writers, however to assist them inform higher tales, the type that make followers care once more. Because proper now, WWE’s largest enemy is just not AI. It’s apathy. And if it takes an algorithm to resolve it, I’ll be the primary to applaud when the robots roll the credit.
