Could AI derail the Hollywood writers' strike?

12:28How AI is complicating the Hollywood writers' strike

Writers are striking in Hollywood to demand better pay and working conditions. But one thing complicating negotiations between the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers is the role of artificial intelligence going forward in the industry.

As the technology advances, there may conceivably come a day where AI can write TV scripts — and AI doesn't require a salary or health benefits. Tech reporter Alyssa Bereznak explains what the WGA is asking for in regards to the use of AI across the industry, and why the AMPTP is pushing back.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow the Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud podcast, on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: So the writers are sort of looking at the ways that the industry has changed. What specifically is the writers union asking for in the face of all this change?

Alyssa: They have three main asks. The first is that AI can't be used to write or rewrite what's referred to as "literary material," which is used to describe anything from a treatment to a screenplay. The second is that AI also can't be used to write source material, which includes intellectual property like books and video games that are adapted into TV shows and movies. And third, the work that is covered by the Writers Guild of America Agreement can't be used to train AI. I think the fear here is that studios could use AI to generate original material, then hand it to writers to punch it up, which would raise questions about authorship but also pay rates, because that kind of work pays less than the original work.

Elamin: So the writers union is pretty much trying to say, "Let's not get AI involved in this world at all." I have to imagine the studios are not too keen on these offers. How are the studios countering this?

Alyssa: The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on behalf of entertainment companies, essentially rejected that proposal and instead offered annual meetings to discuss advancements in technology.

Elamin: Why would they reject that proposal outright, do you think?

Alyssa: You could read between the lines that they absolutely don't want to commit to anything, and that's because AI is a big buzz word in the business world right now; it's being mentioned on investor calls, it's advancing rapidly. Tomorrow, Google is having its annual developers conference, and the main attractions are a bunch of new AI products. One consultant in the industry told The Hollywood Reporter that executives have already asked about getting AI to write scripts during the strike. So they really are thinking this might be the future.

Elamin: I'm not worried about AI writing a show that is like Succession, like The White Lotus; those are shows that have to come from the strange sort of idiosyncrasies of a real-life human being. What are the kinds of shows that AI might be able to consider writing?

Alyssa: Take a formulaic show that could be easier to replicate.… If you fed an AI all the past CSI scripts and told it to generate new ones, you might be able to get something that's in relatively good shape. Especially as AI advances, I imagine it'll be good at processing those things and saying, "Here's another thing like that thing." I think you could also use it for children's content. If you go on YouTube, there's a lot of weird, low-budget children's content that seems like it's AI-generated — but of course on the internet anything goes.

Elamin: I guess the larger thing here is that this gets right at the definition of what a writer is, like whether a writer — it seems like such a strange thing to say — needs to be human. What do you think of this?

Alyssa: You know, one picket sign I saw last week said something like, "ChatGPT doesn't have childhood trauma." And I just love that sign because it gets to the heart of why writing is a deeply human thing.

Humans draw from their own emotions and experiences to put together complex, compelling narratives that speak to other humans. AI has no life experience. It has never spilled a cup of coffee on its shirt three seconds before a big presentation. It's never gone through a breakup. I'm just not convinced it will be able to connect with audiences in the same way a human can. I am biased; I am a human writer. I think writers have to be human.

Elamin: There's a bit of an oddity to the notion of having to identify ourselves as human writers.… What you and I are saying is that makes your writing a little bit more valuable than the thing that is imagined by a machine. But if you're a studio, maybe you're coming at it from an entirely different perspective, which is to say: you just need the script produced by somebody and you don't really care whether it's coming from your childhood trauma or just kind of imagining some scenario…. It's only been, what, six months, seven months since we started talking about ChatGPT? And we're already kind of at this crossroads. What does that tell you about how AI has taken hold in the general conversation?

Alyssa: I think a lot of creative people across other industries are watching this as an indication of how it's going to go in their field. We've heard about people mimicking the voices and the styles of musicians with AI. Journalists are hearing that it is being experimented with in their newsrooms. There's now lawsuits that a bunch of artists have posed against companies that have trained AI using their artwork, to make new artwork. So there's really a lot of questions that are sort of being answered about copyright, about what's permissible.

I think that there's going to be so much creative conversation about what we need to do in order to preserve art and entertainment and journalism. I think if you value those things, you should be paying attention to this stuff, because if you don't set up guardrails for the use of AI, then it's entirely possible that we will get emotionally devoid text in all areas of our life — and maybe even inaccurate, emotionally devoid text.

Elamin: There's something really compelling to me about the fact that this happened so quickly, right? We're not at the place where AI can write a perfect script that a studio is just going to go and produce — and yet, we've reached the alarm point where labour organizers are saying, "This is a time for us to step in." Are your writer friends at a place where they're trying to say, "We need to set up our guardrails now in order to protect against anything in the future"?

Alyssa: I think first and foremost, their priority is to get paid well and consistently, because streaming has already undercut a lot of the basic security of a Hollywood writer job. But second, yeah, they recognize that streaming was this new technological advancement 16 years ago, and they recognize that if they don't set up those guardrails in advance, then a precedent is set and then the studios say, "Sorry, it's precedent. We can't change it."

I think it's like chicken-and-the-egg a little bit in the sense that we don't really know what's going to happen. So much of this is either super positive or doom-and-gloom, and they have to be a little bit more on the doom-and-gloom side because they need to protect themselves. And I think it's important that we're cautious at the start. There isn't any real reason we need to rush into this.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Alyssa Bereznak produced by Jess Low.