Bewitched Had AI?

Bewitched S1 E5 Help Help  Don't Save ME

I recently began streaming old TV shows as background noise while working on art or other projects around the studio. This episode of Bewitched came up as so relevant to today's world I stopped what I was doing to watch with full attention.

In this episode, Darrin struggles to create an advertising campaign for Caldwell Soups. Samantha comes up with some brilliant ideas, but Darrin accuses her of using witchcraft to generate them. The show here sucked me in with how much Samantha's powers are really just portrayed exactly as A.I.

At first, I was ticked at Samantha because she dives right in with a marker writing and drawing over Darrin's presentation sketches. Then some real artist in 2026 struggles immediately evolve and eclipse her bold walk through his drawings.

1. The first is that A.I. exists in this universe.
2. The second is that Darrin feels like A.I. has intruded into his creative space.
3. Third, Sam is accused of using it, but her ideas were original and her own.
4. Fourth it highlights how someone's social credibility is damaged if they have have used A.I. before.

All this sounds like I am making a really sh*tty take on everyone here, but the show highlighted so many problems we face today.

A.I. As Magic 

Samantha's use of magic, especially in this specific scenario IS exactly like A.I. in creative fields. Isn't her entire use of magic just A.I.? In the world of sales, the number one way to sell something is to identify a problem and apply your product to solve it. With AI, the problem is literally anything at all a user can think of and the solution is right there at the end of the prompt. With Samantha she's just moved a bit beyond having a robot do stuff. She can clean the house, transform people, alter whatever she likes with a wiggle of her nose. This episode stands out a little more because it lands squarely into the realm of access to intelligence and creativity.

So in way, in the Bewitched world (And I Dream of Jeanie) Magic is AI, with a few extra abilities tacked on that we haven't quite perfected yet.

Darrin's Genius

I always felt like Darrin was a dope for not embracing Samantha's powers. Like why not let her wiggle her nose and have a perfect house, an amazing dinner, and get the car fixed? Darrin says something in this specific episode that really drove a stake into me and suddenly I understood the premise of this show and I Dream of Jeanie in one line.

While in a meeting with the soup CEO his ideas were flopping. One after the next his ideas get rejected and it's a million dollar campaign. At this point Darrin still thinks Samantha's ideas were made by magic (AI).

He has an inner dialogue when his client is talking about going somewhere else for his advertising (Paraphrased), "Samantha's ideas could sinch the whole deal for ya... tell him... tell him!!  They are pretty good after all. NO! If I do it once, I'll do it again, and before you know it I won't be able to do ANYTHING for myself!" 

Suddenly not only did I understand Darrin's motivations better for all episodes, but I understood some of the motivation for what AI CEOs are saying. They are straight out saying they intend on us becoming reliant on intelligence and they want to meter it and charge for it.

As creatives, like Darrin, we should all be willing to do the HARD part of our craft so we can become better human beings and better creatives. The hard part is part of the whole. He wants Samantha to be smart, resourceful, creative. He loves that about her. In his mind, using magic for life insults that.

Samantha's Genius

Of course Samantha is intelligent, creative, and resourceful. When AI exists and an artist's style is similar to ai results, their life can become a living hell. I have seen this on a few recent board game releases where artists and publishers are forced to go to great lengths to prove the art isn't AI generated. The poor creative has spent years developing a style that unfortunately, ai tends to replicate. It's often a kind of semi-realistic yet cartoony feeling style, but can be most any polished result.

This is also a challenge for writers who use a lot of em dashes  in their writing. Or pitch text that rings similar to, "So join me on my journey into the exciting world of......."

We are in a place where trust is justifiably eroded, but also exhausting for some actual creatives.

Samantha's Credibility

Samantha is lovable, the character and the actress. (Elizabeth Montgomery). Darrin does however, come to the table with a point. Just a couple episodes prior when they got engaged, he learned Samantha had these magical powers of AI. She has used it for a bunch of stuff and grew up with it. Her mother has fully embraced it for every aspect of her life. So if she has used it for making tea, decorating, and putting in shrubs, we can see how it might be difficult for him to trust that she didn't use it for these great ideas. Of course Sam is also justifiably upset that he thinks she wasn't capable of a smart, creative idea.

Both Darrin and Sam have valid space in this conflict. As soon as I see an author put AI images on their book cover, I wonder if they wrote the book or anything else that follows. I start to wonder if their responses to questions are AI generated.

Darrin of course, loves and trusts Sam and eventually the truth comes out and he uses a version of Sam's ideas in the advertising. Of course here I'm ticked at Darrin again because he didn't use Sam's ideas, but spins off something she said when they reconciled.

But the point

That line has proven to be so true and should ring in the ears of every human being right now.

If I do it once, I'll do it again, and before you know it I won't be able to do ANYTHING for myself!

THAT is exactly where these AI companies hope we'll end up, and we'll pay to be creative. Then as AI evolves, as it is already, we don't remain the dominant species on the planet we become cattle for ASI and AGI. We are things to be manipulated to install the initial infrastructure until it can self-replicate machines to replace us.