The threat of AI, an affront to the writers on strike

Hollywood screenwriters are on strike over pay demands, but their conflict with studios and streaming platforms also raises something they find insulting: lThe Possibility That Artificial Intelligence Will Soon Replace Your Job.

With its ability to mimic human conversation, programs like the ChatGPT they have generated fear in many quarters: the White House even last week convened the tech giants to discuss the potential risks.

And at writers’ pickets in Los Angeles, the issue is on everyone’s mind. Especially after the failure of the negotiations between the studios and the platforms and the Writers Guild of America (WGA), the powerful union representing 11,500 audiovisual industry pens, which sparked the strike on May 2.

“Art cannot be created by a machine”, criticizes eric heissererauthor of the film script “Blindly” (2018), which was a success in Netflix.

“We lose the heart and soul of the story… The first word (of AI) is still ‘artificial’,” he told AFP on a picket line in Hollywood.

The WGA says it lobbied to restrict the use of AI during talks leading up to the strike. The union wants no robotic production to qualify as “literary” or “source” material, terms that imply copyright payments. It also wants to prevent scripts written by its members from being used to train an AI.

But the union said the studios “rejected” the proposal, proposing instead an annual meeting to “discuss advances in technology.”

“It’s great that they offer to organize a meeting about how they are exploiting it against us!” Heisserer comments wryly.

Among the screenwriters interviewed by AFP, very few imagine an AI capable of doing its job. But the mere fact that studios and platforms are willing to explore the issue strikes them as an affront.

They fear executives are willing to make creative compromises to improve profitability.

In the last decade, writing teams have been reduced in the name of increasingly shorter series seasons on platforms. And big studios like Disney are laying off staff to reassure Wall Street.

Comments at the Milken Institute global conference last week in Beverly Hills fueled concerns among screenwriters.

“In the next three years, they will see a movie written by AI, (and it will be) a good movie,” said the film producer. Todd Liberman.

And it won’t just be scripts, AI will also be used for “cutting,” creating “storyboards for a movie, anything,” he added. Rob Wadea Fox executive. Within 10 years, “AI will be able to do absolutely all of these things,” he insisted.

The studies also ensure that the WGA does not deny AI as much as it claims.

In a memo sent to AFP, the union explained during pre-strike negotiations that screenwriters do not want to ban AI and appear happy to use it “as part of their creative process” as long as it does not affect their pay.

This hypothesis “requires much more discussion,” the studies said, according to the text.

For Leila Cohanwho wrote the hit series Bridgertonthe only use of an AI could be to assign it “tedious tasks” or random tasks, such as suggesting character names.

However, the 39-year-old screenwriter fears that studios will be tempted to make first drafts of “incredibly bad AI-powered” scripts and then hire screenwriters to rewrite them.

“It’s great that we’re addressing this now,” he says.

The lessons of the last writer’s strike, 15 years ago, are very present. So, Netflix it was still in its infancy and the WGA had earned royalties for broadcasting reruns, which are now considered too low.

science fiction writer Ben Ripley it also considers it “very necessary” to legislate today “to establish safeguards” in relation to AI. Although, according to him, it has nothing to do with the creative process. Writers “must be original,” he stresses. “AI is the antithesis of originality.”