As the Writers Guild of America strikes for better working conditions and increased streaming residuals, networks are refusing to budge on the union’s demand to regulate the use of AI in the writer’s room. Adam Conover, a comedy writer, proposed that AI would not be used to adapt something and that any output of AI would not be considered a writer’s work. The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) however, showed no interest in this proposal and instead offered a yearly meeting to discuss “advances in technology.”
Text-generating algorithms have a great way of responding to requests, however they are unable to produce anything significantly different from the original script, specially for top tier shows like Succession. Ben Zhao, a Professor of University of Chicago, pointed out that large studios are taking this opportunity to minimize the role of human writers and claim ChatGPT’s abilities are greater than what they actually are.
Some of a writer’s job is less obvious than scriptwriting, such as collaborating and communicating with the set decoration department on props. The scenes that appear in a show are written and woven together by the human creative process and currently AI is unable to replicate that. Yedoye Travis, a comedian, argued that AI can be used to bounce ideas and generate content in much shorter times, but worries that studios wish to maximize production output while minimizing wages.
Copyright is also a concern. As AI-generated content is not copyrightable, studios are less likely to shoot a movie which they cannot be sure they own the rights to.
AMPTP’s refusal to acknowledge the writer’s demands points out to what is the core issue of the strike: the people powering Hollywood are not paid their fair share. It is important that there is fair and reasonable regulation for the use of AI in entertainment and that the wages of human creative are respected considering the incredible amount of work that goes into it.
