(CNN) By any standard, John August is a successful screenwriter. He has written movies like ‘Big Fish’, ‘Charlie’s Angels’ and ‘Go’. But even he worries about the impact AI will have on his work.
Powerful new AI tools trained on vast amounts of online data can now generate essays, lyrics, and other writings at your prompts. There are clear limits to how AI tools can come up with compelling creative stories, but these tools are becoming increasingly sophisticated, making writers like August wary.
August, a member of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) board, told CNN, “Screenwriters rely on these systems for our scripts to generate other scripts and processes and to write story ideas. “Our work cannot replace these systems.”
August was one of more than 11,000 members of the WGA who went on strike Tuesday morning, prompting the immediate halt of production on some TV shows and delaying the start of new seasons for others later this year. There is a possibility.
The WGA is pushing the Motion Picture and Television Producers Alliance (AMPTP) to make a number of changes, from raising wages to receiving clear guidelines for working with streaming services. But as part of their demands, the WGA is also fighting to protect their livelihoods from AI.
In a proposal posted on the WGA’s website this week, the union said it would regulate AI to “write or rewrite literary material or use it as source material,” and to “use authors’ works.” “You can’t do it,” he said. Train your AI. ”
August said demand for AI was “one of the last additions” to the WGA’s list, but that it was “clearly an issue that the authors are concerned about” and that he expects to hear back in three years. Instead, he said it needs to be addressed now. By then, he said, “it might be too late.”
The proposal was rejected by AMPTP, which responded by holding an annual conference to discuss technological advances, according to the WGA. Mr. August said AMPTP’s response shows its willingness to keep options open.
In a letter sent to CNN in response to some WGA questions, AMPTP praised the creators’ work, stating that “the best stories are original, insightful, and often based on people’s own experiences.” It comes from,” he said.
“AI raises important creative and legal issues that are difficult for everyone. Given that AI material is not copyrighted, this is complicated, so this is something that requires a lot more discussion.”
Also, the current WGA convention defines “authors” as “people” and states that “AI-generated material is not eligible to write credit.”
The authors’ attempt at negotiating around AI is perhaps the most high-profile labor dispute yet to address concerns about the state-of-the-art that grabbed the world’s attention six months after ChatGPT’s release.
Goldman Sachs economists estimate that the latest wave of AI could automate some of the 300 million full-job jobs worldwide. White-collar workers, including managers and legal workers, are expected to be most affected. The IBM CEO recently suggested that AI could eliminate thousands of jobs in his company alone over the next five years.
David Gunkel, a communications professor at Northern Illinois University who tracks AI in media and entertainment, says screenwriters want clear guidelines around AI.
“AI is already replacing human labor in many other areas of content creation, such as copywriting, journalism and SEO writing. is… ‘technical unemployment’.”
On May 2, 2023, the picket began in front of Netflix in Hollywood, CA.
Hollywood film and TV writers may be leading the way right now, but other industry professionals will almost certainly take note.
“There are certainly other industries that need to pay close attention to this area,” says Rowan Curran, an analyst and AI expert at Forrester Research. He said digital artists, musicians, engineers, real estate professionals and his customer service workers will all feel the impact of generative AI.
“Watch this #WGA strike carefully,” wrote writer, director and former actress Justin Bateman. Tweet Right after the strike started. “Please understand that our battle is the same battle that comes next in your field of expertise: devaluing human effort, skill, and talent in favor of automation and profit.” is.”
AI in film and TV
AI has been active in Hollywood for years. In the 2018 movie Marvel Avengers Infinity Wars, the face of Thanos, the character played by actor Josh Brolin, was created using this technology.
Crowd and fight scenes in movies like ‘Lord of the Rings’ and ‘Meg’ make use of AI, and recently Indiana Jones used it to make Harrison Ford’s character look younger. . It’s also used for color correction, finding footage more quickly during post-production and making improvements like removing scratches and dust from footage.
But AI in screenwriting is just the beginning. In March, an episode of “South Park” called “Deep Learning” was co-written by his ChatGPT, and this tool was very prominent in the plot (characters used his ChatGPT to talk to girls, write school reports).
August argues that writers primarily use tools to play ball, as long as the tools are used as a launch pad or used for research and the writers are credited and utilized throughout the production process. He said he didn’t mind.
“Screenwriters are no slouch. We’ve been quick to use new technology to help tell stories,” August said. “We’ve happily moved from a typewriter to a word his processor and it’s made us more productive…..but we don’t want a magic typewriter that automatically types all our scripts.”
Intellectual property concerns also exist, as large-scale language models are trained on text previously written by humans to find patterns in words and sentences to create responses to prompts. “Completely possible [chatbot] Scripting in the style of a particular kind of filmmaker or screenwriter without the prior consent of the original artist or the Hollywood studio that holds the IP of that material,” said Gunkel.
For example, you can tell ChatGPT to generate a zombie apocalypse drama in the style of David Mamet. “Who should get credit for it?” said August. “What if we allowed producers and studio executives to come up with a treatment or a pitch or something that looked like a script that the writer didn’t touch on?”
So far, the legal situation on this issue remains very volatile, 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 artificial intelligence systems like ChatGPT accountable.
“We can’t protect studios from their own bad choices. We can only protect writers from abuse.”
Can AI cross picket lines?
Strikes, especially those involving AI, come at a time when both writers and studios are feeling financial pain.
Many of the companies represented by AMPTP have seen their share prices fall, prompting significant cost cutting, including layoffs. The need to control costs, combined with dealing with the impact of the strike, may make companies feel even more pressure to rely on his AI for screenwriting.
“In the short term, this could be an effective way of avoiding a strike, primarily by the WGA. [large language models]Considered property, not personnel.
But Joshua Glick, a visiting professor of film and electronic arts at Bard College, doesn’t think such a move would be wise.
“AI is such an important issue in the negotiations that it would be a pretty aggressive and adversarial move for a studio to go ahead with an AI-generated script in terms of putting writers on the negotiating table. -Deepfake: Unstable Evidence on Screen at the Museum of the Moving Image, New York.
“At the same time, I think the results of these scripts will be mediocre at best,” he said.
No matter how the studios react, the problem is unlikely to go away in Hollywood.Film and TV actors’ contracts expire in June, and many have had their faces, bodies, and voices altered by AI. August said he was worried about how he would be affected.
“As writers, we don’t want the tools to replace us, but actors, directors, editors, and everyone else doing creative work in this industry do.” I have the same concerns about AI.
