The Hollywood Writers Guild of America (WGA) recently went on strike after negotiations with major entertainment companies failed. This strike is the first in 15 years and comes at a critical moment for the industry – writers are negotiating the use of generative AI tools like ChatGPT. The WGA wants to regulate AI’s use in union projects, but the AMPTP rejected their proposal, insisting on annual meetings to discuss technology advancements. The WGA sees AI’s use as a symptom of larger problems in the industry, namely that companies don’t value writers.
Many writers contend that relying on AI tools at their expense shows a lack of value for their work and expertise. The guild’s two AI stipulations are that literary material, such as screenplays, outlines, treatments, and the like, should not be generated by AI. If a movie made by a studio that has an agreement with the WGA includes a writing credit, then the writer needs to be a person. Second, source material should not come from AI-generated ideas or drafts. Studios often hire writers to adapt source materials, like a novel or an article, into new multimedia productions such as films or television series.
C. Robert Cargill, a renowned screenwriter, noted that the immediate fear of AI is not so much that writers will get replaced, but that they would be underpaid to rewrite AI-generated content into something much better. The problem is that studios might be inclined to hire writers to “polish up” AI-generated drafts for lower rates. This situation would lead to various issues, including underpaid writers and portraying AI as taking on work performed by humans.
The AMPTP’s position underscores a pervasive, overblown view of AI capabilities, following corporate media shake-ups where executives prioritize AI content over human-created content. Buzzfeed CEO Jonah Peretti recently shuttered Buzzfeed News, claiming the company would pivot to a new strategy with “AI enhancements.” However, researchers at Microsoft recently acknowledged that GPT-4 may struggle to recognize factual content and personalize outputs to users, and tend to make outlandish conceptual leaps. The AI also invents information not found in the training datasets, making it sensitive to framing and wording of prompts and inheriting prejudices and biases from its training data.
Generative AI systems already face copyright issues from writers and artists who claim that their copyrighted data was used to train AI models without their permission. Getty Images filed a lawsuit against AI company Stability AI for using over 12 million photographs from Getty to train its models. Karla Ortiz, an artist and board member of the Concept Art Association, leads a fundraising effort that aims to hire a Washington D.C. lobbyist to update IP laws and enforce more regulations for AI companies. Screenwriting training of AI without explicit permission of the writers is implausible.
The WGA is also concerned about underpaid foreign AI workers who are charged with training, moderating, and maintaining many of the world’s largest AI models. These systems are less automated than people assume. The focus on efficiency is often at the expense of the workers, perpetuating a power imbalance and exploitation of workers from countries with fewer workplace regulations.
In conclusion, the WGA’s proposals to regulate AI’s use in union projects face resistance from the AMPTP, perpetuating larger problems where companies do not value writers. AI is subject to various biases, and the immediate fear is that writers will be vastly underpaid to rewrite AI-generated content into human-quality output. Copyright violations and underpaid foreign workers are other valid concerns. There is much to consider when deciding AI’s role in the entertainment industry.
Editor Notes:
The WGA’s strike highlights how entrenched the usage of generative AI systems are in the entertainment industry. It takes a lot of change to remove entrenched systems. AI in the entertainment industry has many issues from ethical to IP and so regulators must update the laws to make sure these issues are dealt with. AI is not all bad, but it is not perfect, and this is something that we should keep in mind. Check GPT News Room for more exciting news regarding AI’s role in the entertainment industry.
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