After the union sent a cautionary message about the studios’ “playbook,” the group representing those companies in negotiations said, “Our only playbook is getting people back to work.”
If they were serious about “getting people back to work”, they’d pay them.
So in the end, it will always be about profits. I feel very sad for every writer who put their whole lives perfecting their craft.
I think it’ll mature and real human writing will retain prestige over AI generated content.
I’d imagine AI would make writing easier for writers. I use it to write letters to various government depts for my job. I just take their latest press releases, copy all the text and ask gpt to write a letter requesting what I want and use their output to customise the letter and make it relevant.
It used to take me days, now I get something I can quickly edit to add a bit of human feeling to it and hit send. It’s pretty amazing.
Writing a screenplay or television script is not the same as writing a letter to a government department, anymore than painting a portrait is the same as painting a house… One is a work of creative expression, the other is simply a menial task (no offense).
LLMs can help with writing an email, but they’re not producing a script worth reading anytime soon, if ever. The job you describe is the type that generative AI will one day eliminate, but not screenwriters—at least not if studios want audiences to continue watching scripted movies and TV.
If studio executives had a creative bone in their bodies, they would understand this fundamental fact.
The only time I’ve found LLMs to be useful for creative writing is when I need lists of things.
I think it’d be a good tool for a writer. I’d bet Bret Easton Ellis would have used AI to write large portions of American Psycho. All those passages like the ones about Huey Lewis and the News etc would be much easier to write with AI I think.
Sure, you’re right in that case. But most novels and scripts don’t contain extended encyclopedia-like entries. Besides American Psycho, Moby Dick and House of Leaves are the only other ones I can recall off the top of my head.
I think for formulaic type books it could be used to flesh out a basic plot. Like, Tom Clancy has been dead for years, but he keeps bringing out books…
I even didn’t thought of it! Even I’m a big fan of using AI as a tool. As what you’ve said, AI would really help a lot of these writers, but no to the extent AI would replace each one of them.
I’m also one of the skeptics when AI rose to mainstream, but I swalloed my ego and gave it a try a damn it really helps you a lot!
It will boil down to AI won’t replace you, but a person using one will. I’ve never considered AI as an entity, but as a tool that I can harness and make use of. Incredibly amazing
Keep it going. The studios will buckle eventually
Employers always need labor, even in the wake of automation, because executives never know how their products are made, so they assume they could do it, and automate it.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A day before the Writers Guild of America is set to meet with the group representing Hollywood studios and streamers in contract negotiations, the union is warning its members that management may not be willing yet to cede serious ground.
The message arrived prior to a planned Friday meeting between leaders for the WGA and the AMPTP, which will be the first gathering of the warring parties since the union called a strike on May 2.
AMPTP president Carol Lombardini requested the meeting with the union to discuss negotiations, the WGA told its members on Tuesday.
“We challenge the studios and AMPTP to come to the meeting they called for this Friday with a new playbook: Be willing to make a fair deal and begin to repair the damage your strikes and your business practices have caused the workers in this industry,” the negotiating committee said.
The union additionally claimed that “every step of the way through this struggle, the AMPTP has run its tired anti-union playbook straight out of the 2007/08 strike.” Noting that the writers’ strike has lasted 94 days, the negotiating committee added, “We have not come all this way, and sacrificed this much, to half-save ourselves.”
As THR reported on Wednesday, writers, including former WGA leaders, initially greeted the news that the AMPTP and their union would meet on Friday with cautious optimism.
I’m a bot and I’m open source!
I just created the summary! You can find it at https://lemmings.world/comment/920176.
