TV and film writers are fighting to save their jobs from AI. They won’t be the last CNN Business

CNN
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By any standards, John August is a successful screenwriter. He has written films such as “Big Fish”, “Charlie’s Angels” and “Go”. But even he is worried about the impact AI could have on his work.

A powerful new set of AI tools, trained on a wealth of online data, can now generate essays, song lyrics and other written work in response to user prompts. While there are clear limits to how AI tools can produce compelling creative stories, these tools are only getting more advanced, putting writers like August on guard.

“Screenwriters are concerned about our scripts being the feed material that goes into these systems to generate other scripts, treatments and writing story ideas,” said August, a member of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) committee. on CNN. “The work we do cannot be replaced by these systems.”

August is one of more than 11,000 WGA members who went on strike Tuesday morning, immediately halting production on some television shows and possibly delaying the start of new seasons of others later this year.

The WGA is demanding a number of changes at the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), from a pay raise to receiving clear guidelines on working with streaming services. But as part of its demands, the WGA is also fighting to protect its livelihoods from AI.

In a proposal posted on the WGA website this week, the union said AI should be regulated so that “it cannot write or rewrite literary material, it cannot be used as source material” and that the work of writers ” cannot be used.” to train AI.”

August said the AI ​​lawsuit “was one of the last things” added to the WGA’s list, but it’s “clearly an issue that worries the writers” and needs to be addressed now, not when his contact comes back to be in three years. By then, he said, “it may be too late.”

WGA said the proposal was rejected by AMPTP, which countered by offering annual meetings to discuss advances in technology. (AMPTP did not respond to a request for comment.) August said AMPTP’s response shows they want to keep their options open.

The writers’ attempt to negotiate on AI is perhaps the most high-profile labor battle yet to address concerns about the cutting-edge technology that has captivated the world’s attention in the six months since ChatGPT’s public launch.

Economists at Goldman Sachs estimate that up to 300 million full jobs worldwide could be automated in some way with the new wave of AI. White-collar workers, including those in administrative and legal roles, are expected to be the most affected. And the impact may come sooner than some think: IBM’s CEO recently suggested that AI could eliminate the need for thousands of jobs at his company alone within the next five years.

David Gunkel, a professor in Northern Illinois University’s communications department who tracks AI in media and entertainment, said screenwriters want clear guidelines on AI because “they can see the writing on the wall.”

“AI is already displacing human labor in many other areas of content creation: copywriting, journalism, SEO writing, etc.,” he said. “The WGA is simply trying to get out in front and protect its members against . . . tech unemployment.”

While Hollywood film and television writers may be leading the charge, professionals in other industries will almost certainly be paying attention.

“There are certainly other industries that need to pay close attention to this space,” said Rowan Curran, a Forrester Research analyst who focuses on AI. He noted that digital artists, musicians, engineers, real estate professionals and customer service workers will feel the impact of generative AI.

“Look closely at this #WGA strike,” wrote Justine Bateman, writer, director and former actress. tweet shortly after the start of the strike. “Understand that our struggle is the same one that will come to your professional sector next: it is the devaluation of human effort, skill and talent in favor of automation and profit.”

AI has had a place in Hollywood for years. In the 2018 movie “Marvel Avengers Infinity Wars,” the face of Thanos, a character played by actor Josh Brolin, was created in part with the technology.

Crowd and battle scenes in movies like “Lord of the Rings” and “Meg” have used AI, and the more recent Indiana Jones used it to make Harrison Ford’s character look younger. It has also been used to correct color, find images faster in post-production, and make improvements such as removing scratches and dust from images.

But AI in screenwriting is in its infancy. In March, ChatGPT co-wrote an episode of “South Park” called “Deep Learning,” and the tool focused heavily on the plot (characters use ChatGPT to talk to girls and write school papers).

August said writers are largely willing to play ball with tools, as long as they are used as a launching pad or for research and the writers are still credited and used throughout the production process.

“Screenwriters are not Luddites, and we’ve been quick to use new technologies to help us tell our stories,” August said. “We went from typewriters to word processors with joy and productivity increased. …. But we don’t need a magic typewriter that writes scripts on its own.”

Because large language models are trained on text that humans have written before and find patterns in words and sentences to create responses to prompts, there are also concerns about intellectual property. “It is entirely possible for one [chatbot] to generate a script in the style of a particular type of filmmaker or screenwriter without the prior consent of the original artist or the Hollywood studio that owns the IP for that material,” Gunkel said.

For example, ChatGPT could be asked to generate a David Mamet-style zombie apocalypse drama. “Who should be credited for this?” said Augustus. “What if we allow a producer or studio executive to come up with a treatment or a proposal or something that looks like a script that no writer has touched?”

For now, the legal landscape remains very uneasy on the issue, with regulations lagging behind the rapid pace of AI development. In early April, the Biden administration said it was seeking public comment on how to hold AI systems like ChatGPT accountable.

“We can’t protect studios from their own bad choices,” August said. “We can only protect writers from abuse.”

The strike, and the lawsuits surrounding AI specifically, come at a time when both screenwriters and studios are feeling financial pain.

Many of the companies represented by AMPTP have experienced falls in their stock prices, which has led to deep cost-cutting, including layoffs. The need to manage costs, combined with dealing with the fallout from the strike, can only make companies feel more pressure to turn to AI for scripting.

“In the short term, this could be an effective way to circumvent the WGA strike, mainly because [large language models]which are considered property and not personal, can be employed for this task without violating the picket line,” Gunkel said. This “experiment” could also show production studios whether it is possible to “achieve with fewer humans involved “, he said.

But Joshua Glick, visiting professor of film and electronic arts at Bard University, believes such a move would be ill-advised.

“It would be a pretty aggressive and antagonistic move for studios to move forward with AI-generated scripts to get screenwriters to come to the negotiating table because AI is a crucial point in negotiations,” said Glick, who also co . -created Deepfake: Unstable Evidence on Screen, an exhibition at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York.

“At the same time, I think the outcome of these scripts would be pretty mediocre at best,” he said.

Even if the studios fight back, the problem is unlikely to go away in Hollywood. Film and TV actors’ contracts run out in June, and many are worried about how their faces, bodies and voices will be affected by AI, August said.

“As writers, we don’t want tools to replace us, but actors have the same concerns with AI as directors, editors and everyone else who does creative work in this industry,” he added.