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The Writer's Guild of America (WGA) is on strike as of May 2nd, after negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) broke down. While most of their demands deal with the way pay and compensation in the streaming era is structured, on the second page towards the bottom is:
I think this is an interesting first salvo in the fight over AI in creative professions. While this is just where both parties are starting for strike negotiations, and either could shift towards a compromise, I still can't help but see a hint that AMPTP isn't super interested in foregoing the use of AI in the future.
In 2007, when the WGA went on strike for 3 months, it had a huge effect on television at the time. There was a shift to unscripted programming, like reality television, and some shows with completed scripts that had been on the back burner got fast tracked to production. Part of me doubts that generative AI is really at the point where this could happen, but it would be fascinating if the AMPTP companies didn't just use traditional scabs during this strike, but supplemented them with generative AI in some way. Maybe instead of a shift to reality television, we'll look back on this as the first time AI became a significant factor in the production of scripted television and movies. Imagine seeing a "prompt engineer" credit at the end of every show you watch in the future.
It'll be interesting to see how this all plays out.
Man, I just have very little sympathy for these writers. Any job that a substantial amount of people would do for free in their spare time is obviously going to have immense downwards pressure on pay. These people consciously took a risk with their career, and now they're getting burned for it. The issue they're having is a difference in the supply of aspiring writers and demand.
Here's a Reddit take with 1k upvotes from this post:
There's a sickening reverence the blue tribe has for those working in creative fields. These writers AFAIK usually earn more (albeit less consistently) than the grips and grunts responsible for the rest of the production. But through their outsized influence on culture and the zeitgeist (the real compensation of their work and a reason it has the status people chase) you get a situation like in the quote above taking place. This strike affects the financial security of countless others in the industry, who (at least overwhelmingly so on Reddit) have somehow convinces themselves this is OK.
I don't actually know too much about the specifics of the Writers' guild union, but they leave me with the same instinctual disgust I have for unions in general. I hope someone can link me to some well written and sourced pro union articles to educate me on this, but comments like these in the same Reddit post leave a bitter taste in my mouth
I get the theory behind the usefulness of collective bargaining and how it should result/has resulted in better worker treatment, but god, the aesthetics are just awful. Just seems like collective bullying and the imposition of economic dead weight to me.
As a Europoor who never had the privileged opportunity to work on global cultural defining work, let them stifle the American media machine into the dirt. Maybe Netflix can fund some more cool German or British works.
source: https://old.reddit.com/r/television/comments/135adyi/the_writers_guild_of_america_is_officially_on/
As for the AI question. High budget productions will be the last affected, with generative art or text models. Right now, Ai can't replicate top talent, but it can replicate a lot of the low quality writing and CGI that's rushed out of low budget media. We will see Paw Patrol be automated years before a season of GOT has AI paintings in the background. Which still means that most shows will still be heavily affected, as most shows don't have anything like the budget of a GOT. The biggest change this would bring about first, is more, nicher, and cheaper shows, but also a further squeezing in the winner's take all reality of creative profession to decide who gets those scant jobs in prestige TV.
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