Peter Luisi

Peter Luisi is a Swiss director, screenwriter and producer, born in Zurich in 1975 to an Italian father and an American mother. He studied film production in the US, graduating from the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 1998, edited advertising for two years, and in 2000 founded Spotlight Media Productions in Zurich, where his brother David is also a producer.

His features include Verflixt verliebt (2004), The Fraulein and the Sandman (2011), Unlikely Heroes (2014), which won the Locarno audience award, and Bon Schuur Ticino (2023), which Wikipedia ranks seventh among Swiss films by domestic admissions. He co-wrote Fredi Murer's Vitus, which was shortlisted for the foreign-language Oscar.

For The Last Screenwriter (2024) he had ChatGPT write the script in December 2023, prompting it for a plot about a screenwriter who realises AI writes better than he does, then for characters, an outline and scenes. He says he cut repetition but added no ideas of his own, and sees his part as closer to director, assistant or editor than writer. It was shot in January 2024 with a UK cast on a reported $850,000 budget.

Its premiere at London's Prince Charles Cinema, set for 23 June 2024, was cancelled after audience objections to AI replacing a writer; Luisi told Screen Daily he had hoped the venue would not give in to a few upset people. Saying he wanted to add to the debate on AI in film, he released it free online on 5 July 2024 with notes on the writing process. The Times gave it two stars.