When the union representing Hollywood writers released its list, the purpose Contract negotiations with studios this spring included familiar language about compensation, but the writers say they’re either stagnant or depressed amid the explosion of new shows.
Farther down, however, the document apparently took a 2023 twist. The purpose is to regulate the use of materials created by
computer programmer, marketing copywriter, trip Advisors, lawyers, and comic book illustrators suddenly felt uneasy about the increasing power of generative AI and could add screenwriters.
“By 2026, we may be negotiating with these companies, but before that, they may say, ‘We’ll be fine,'” according to The Good Place and Parks. and Recreation”.
“We don’t need you,” he imagines hearing from the other side. “We have a lot of AI that’s creating a lot of entertainment that people find satisfying to some degree.”
In their attempts to resist, the writers have something that many other white-collar workers do not: the union.
Schuur, a member of the Writers Guild of America’s negotiating committee, said he was trying to avoid a strike before his contract expired on Monday, saying the union “is drawing a line now and saying, ‘Writers are human.
But historians say unions have generally failed to curb new technologies that enable automation and the replacement of skilled workers with unskilled ones. Jason Resnikov, an assistant professor of history at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands who studies labor and automation, said:
The fate of the writers, actors and directors negotiating new contracts this year may say a lot about whether this pattern will continue in the age of artificial intelligence.
December, Apple introduced a service An innovation that could replace the hundreds of voice actors who make their living off audiobooks by allowing book publishers to use AI narrators that sound like humans. The company’s website says the service will benefit independent authors and small publishers.
“I know someone has to get there first. Some company,” said Chris Ciura. He estimates he’s been earning between $100,000 and $130,000 a year writing book narrations under a union contract for the past five years. “But it’s disappointing for individuals who don’t understand how that ultimately affects the bucket-carrying narrator.”
Other actors fear studios will use AI to duplicate their voices and keep them out of the process. Lindsay Rousseau, an actress who makes a living from her voice work, said:
Actors on set point out that studios are already using motion and performance capture to recreate the artist’s movements and expressions. Blockbuster of 2018″black pantherutilized this technique for a scene depicting hundreds of tribesmen on a cliff, mimicking the movements of dancers hired for the film.
Some actors worry that new versions of technology will allow studios to effectively steal their moves. He serves on the board of his trade union, SAG-AFTRA, in Los Angeles.
And with ChatGPT’s adeptness at mimicking the style of prolific authors, Hollywood writers are becoming increasingly uneasy.
“Early in our conversations with the Guild, we discussed what I call the Nora Ephron issue,” said John August, a board member of the Writers Guild. “Basically, what would happen if you fed all of Nora Ephron’s scripts into your system and generated AI that could make scripts like Nora Ephron?”
August, a screenwriter for movies like Charlie’s Angels and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, said artificial intelligence had sidelined compensation in negotiations with the Writers’ Union, but the unions had two key issues on the issue. Said he was making a request. of automation.
We want chatbots to be unable to write or rewrite literary material such as scripts, treatments, plots, or even individual scenes. “A terrible case where you’re like, ‘Oh, I read your script. I didn’t like the scene, so I had ChatGPT rewrite the scene’ — it’s a nightmare scenario,” he said. I was.
Guild also wants to prevent studios from using chatbots to generate source material that humans adapt to the screen in ways that adapt stories from novels and magazines.
The actors’ union, SAG-AFTRA, says a growing number of its members are flagging individual work contracts that appear to claim studios’ rights to produce new performances using their voices. increase.
A recent Netflix deal allows the company to make actor voice simulations free for use “permanently throughout the universe by all technologies and processes now known or hereafter developed.” was wanted.
According to Netflix, the language has been in place for several years and has allowed one actor’s voice to sound more like another when casting changes between seasons of an anime production.
union is the member said Although producers are not bound by contract clauses that allow them to simulate new performances without paying actors, they may still step in to remove them from the contract.
SAG-AFTRA Executive Director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland said such contracts pose far greater risks for non-union parties. Crabtree-Ireland said, “A single waiver of rights once or a few times in his lifetime could have a negative impact on his career prospects.”
The Motion Picture and Television Producers Alliance, which is negotiating with various unions representing writers, actors and directors on behalf of major Hollywood studios, declined to comment.
When professionals avoid obsolescence through technology, the results often reflect the status and prestige of their profession.
To some extent, this seems to have been the case with airline pilots, as by the late 1990s most domestic commercial flights were down to two crew members, but since then automation has become much more sophisticated and the industry has expanded. have been searching further reduction.
Allied Pilots Association spokesman Capt. Dennis Tadger said: Represents an American Airlines pilot. To date, he needs at least three pilots for flights over nine hours.
The replacement of certain doctors by artificial intelligence, which some experts predicted was imminent in fields such as radiology, has also not materialized.it is partially limit And for the excellence of the physicians who threw themselves into high-risk conversations about the safety and deployment of AI, the American College of Radiology Data Science Institute partly for this purpose years ago.
Whether screenwriters achieve similar success depends, at least in part, on the inherent limitations of the machines that purport to do their work. It talks about the so-called uncanny valley, from which there is no escape.
“Artists look at everything that has ever been created to find the spark of something new,” said Javier Grillo Marxuac, writer and producer of “Lost” and “The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance.” I’m here. “What the machine is doing is recombination.”
No matter how sophisticated the algorithms are, the fate of writers and actors will depend on how well they defend their positions. How good are they at convincing you?
The union is pushing their case. August says it’s up to the writers’ union, not the studio, to decide who gets writer’s credit on a project, and the union will jealously observe this ritual. I try not to be one of the writers,” he said.
SAG-AFTRA’s Crabtree-Ireland said trade unions also have a legal card, similar to a statement from the US Copyright Office. March Content that is entirely algorithmically generated is not subject to copyright protection. It is difficult to monetize your work if there are no legal obstacles to copying.
Perhaps more important, he said, is what’s called the Us Weekly factor, the tendency for audiences to care as much about the person behind the character as they do about the performance. Fans want to hear Hollywood celebrities discuss their methods in interviews.
“If you look at culture in general, audiences are generally interested in the real lives of our members,” Crabtree Ireland said. I am not in a position.”
