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Undermine ps47/3/2023 ![]() ![]() But the fantasy of the technology will be used to devalue us, to pay us less.”Ī writer and executive producer on a streaming show, on the picket line in front of Warner Bros. It fits neatly into what companies have been doing - turning everything they can into gig work.” Adds WGA negotiating committee member Adam Conover ( The G Word With Adam Conover), who was also demonstrating in front of the streamer, “AI can’t and won’t replace us. You can easily see the job becoming polishing AI scripts. “This is existential for us,” said writer Vinnie Wilhelm ( Penny Dreadful: City of Angels) as he picketed Netflix’s Hollywood offices. Thanks to the WGA’s account of how their proposal on AI was received, the issue became a lightning rod on the picket lines on the first day of the strike. That taps into the fear from the WGA that, as the union outlined May 1, producers “opened the door to writing as an entirely freelance profession.” According to WGA negotiating committee co-chair Chris Keyser, before talks abruptly concluded that day and the guild went on strike, the AMPTP “would not deal with us on AI” as the guild sought to block literary material from being written or rewritten by the technology, and to prevent AI from creating source material. She notes, “I’ve had a couple of higher-level people ask, if a strike does happen, how quickly could they spin up an AI system to just write the scripts? And they’re serious.” That’s already happening, according to Amy Webb, founder and CEO of Future Today Institute, which does long-range scenario planning and consultation for Fortune 500 companies and Hollywood creatives. “The worry is that down the road you can see some producer or executive trying to use one of these tools to do a job that a writer really needs to be doing.” “The challenge is we want to make sure that these technologies are tools used by writers and not tools used to replace writers,” says Big Fish and Aladdin writer John August, who is also a member of the WGA’s 2023 negotiating committee. While AI is one of the more abstract issues on the table during this strike - alongside the regulation of so-called mini-rooms (small writers rooms that are convened before a project is greenlit), wage floors and residuals - experts say Hollywood shouldn’t ignore the 800-pound robot in the room. But that has changed as the technology has advanced and AI has become a key deal point in the ongoing writers union negotiations. Initially, as ChatGPT emerged in late 2022 and early 2023, writers who spoke with The Hollywood Reporter weren’t particularly scared by the chatbots that could generate movie or TV pitches on command, viewing them more as collaborative tools that can help spur ideas rather than ways to replace humans entirely. Cannes: Sean Penn Throws Support Behind Hollywood Writers, Says AMPTP Should Be Renamed "Bankers' Guild" ![]()
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