Vince Gilligan

Vince Gilligan (born 1967 in Richmond, Virginia) wrote for The X-Files before creating Breaking Bad (2008–2013), routinely ranked among the greatest television series ever made, and co-creating its acclaimed prequel Better Call Saul. In November 2025 he returned with Pluribus on Apple TV+, a science-fiction series starring Rhea Seehorn in which a virus leaves humanity placidly, contentedly hive-minded.

“This show was made by humans”

Viewers who sat through Pluribus’s end credits found a pointed disclaimer tucked beneath the animal-safety notice: “This show was made by humans.” Gilligan told Variety exactly why: “I hate AI,” he said, calling it “the world’s most expensive and energy-intensive plagiarism machine” and likening its output to a cow chewing cud — “an endlessly regurgitated loop of nonsense.” He suggested there was “a very high possibility that this is all a bunch of horseshit” sold by “centibillionaires whose greatest life goal is to become the world’s first trillionaires,” capping it with: “Thank you, Silicon Valley! Yet again, you’ve f—ed up the world.”

Gilligan has insisted Pluribus is not an AI allegory — he says the idea predates the ChatGPT era by a decade — but critics found the timing irresistible: a show about losing individual, imperfect minds to a serene collective intelligence, badged with a certificate of human authorship. The disclaimer has since been cited as a template other productions might adopt, a kind of organic-food label for storytelling.