The WGA is set to strike at 12:01AM Los Angeles time on Tuesday, after negotiations with studios failed.
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Yeah, in the strike notification email, the WGA said the AMPTP wouldn’t budge on free work from screenwriters, from requiring a WGA writer to operate AI and for minmum employment length on TV shows. These are issues that WGA won’t give up. I wouldn’t be surprised if this turns out to be a very long strike.
I’ll be working on a spec script tomorrow…
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It strikes me that most unions are there to protect employees in industries where, although there is clear skill and experience involved, there is a degree of fungibility between employees — ie the employer is apathetic over which of a group of potentially large population of people that have the necessary [truck / nursing / etc] license and qualification actually fulfils this function.
Why, in such a hotly contested, highly skilled and creative industry is this not solved by individual writers taking their talent elsewhere if unhappy with terms? The only way I can see that this position would arise is if the employers have formed a cartel-like approach to employee negotiation (which is illegal over here, not sure about over there) and I wonder if the Union’s approach hasn’t not only enabled but actively enforced such a position.
(Caveat - I admit that I am speaking from ignorance here. Genuinely interested in why the above is right or wrong)
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With very few exceptions, the movie/TV/video industry sees writers as largely interchangeable. Actors, too, for that matter, with the exception of a handful of marquee names.
The other issue is, where is “elsewhere?” There are really only a handful of places for writers to go if they want consistent work.
Even now, the distribution of entertainment is highly concentrated in the Southern California area. If you’re not working for a company that belongs to the AMPTP, you’re not in the big leagues. And If you’re not in he big leagues, you probablycan’t earn enough to buy a house, or put your kids through college.
In the USA, Congress has made special laws for labor unions that allows them to engage in otherwise illegal activitiy like collusion so that working people have some leverage against powerful management concerns. There is a long, bitter, violent history of labor relations in the US, and the resulting laws make it more difficult for industry owners to abuse workers.
The strike is really the only power the writers have. We are indispensible in the process of creating fictional entertainment. Withholding our labor reminds management that we are indispensible. They may treat us as fungible, faceless proles to be endlessly replaced, but collectively we are irreplaceable.
I predict that the AMPTP will move significantly only after the streamers take a stock hit. The streamers are prepared for a 100-day strike, so they won’t take this seriously until we hit about 120 days.
Unless they figure it’s cheaper in the long run to pump more money into the development of AI “writers” (or animators, etc.). I really hope I’m wrong and you’re right, at least for some time.
That’s exactly why the WGA has drawn a line in the sand about AI-generated work. AI’s don’t write scripts spontaneously. They have to be prompted by a human. The WGA wants to make sure that human is a WGA member.
Even if you had an autonomous AI that self-generates stories, it still is doing so because a person programmed it to do so. The WGA contends that programming/training AIs to replace WGA writers is no different than hiring scabs to do the same thing.
Makes sense. I’m just wondering what leverage you have after that tipping point. That will be like a horseshoers strike in 1900.
It’s more like the Teamsters (truck drivers union, one of the strongest unions in USA). The “team” in Teamsters is a team of horses drawing a wagon. The union made the case that truck driving should fall under their union, and they ultimately prevailed.
Also, AI looks most impressive outside your own domain of expertise. If you’re a lawyer and you ask an AI for legal advice, you will see that it’s not very good. I have yet to see a screnplay page written by an AI that was professional caliber.
Early days, of course, but writing great screenplays is really difficult for humans, and even more difficult for LLMs.
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This. ChatGPT is that guy on the internet who can expound on any topic at length and with complete confidence … while experts on the topic role their eyes at what complete BS is being spouted.
In part because that’s exactly the kind of material that was used to train ChatGPT.
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I agree that ChatGPT & Co. aren’t going to replace skilled writers. Not even mediocre ones. In the immediate future. Five, ten, maybe twenty years from now? Wouldn’t put my money on the humans, to be honest.
Because those are still (human) drivers. What happens when autonomous driving trucks become the norm? Okay, someone had to build them. Does this mean software engineers will keep the truck drivers union alive? 
In the greater part, it’s because Chatbots were designed to mimic human language in a believeable way. The design solution for this was to teach the AI to look for the most popular ways of phrasing and responding to prompts. This is great for making the bot seem more human-like. It’s terrible for creating original content, because it by defininition looks for the popular and ordinary way of expressing things, rather than the original.
That’s what I mean by “regresses to the mean.” It’s built to choose mediocre phrasing.
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If the history of the Teamsters is any clue, I expect there will be a manditory Teamster riding in the “driverless” robot truck as a “supervisor.”
An old joke often told (quietly) on set:
Q: How many Teamsters does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: 27. DO YOU HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THAT?
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Autonomous driving is a lot harder than the people trying to get investors for self-driving vehicle projects are willing to admit.
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Probably not, since the National Labor Relations Board, the courts, and various political entities have often classified white-collar workers like software engineers as “management” types of positions and therefore precluded by law from union membership.
Those definitions were established in the 1900s when clear lines between the factory worker and their managers could be made.
I think we’re about 50-75 years overdue for new definitions for who’s a “worker” versus a “manager.”
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Are studios really looking for the original? This isn’t even an “AI question”, which came into the frame just very recently. Big money tends to prefer the average, safe, tried and true. The only new trend seems to be blaming the customers for not being enthusiastic enough about the product.
That’s possible. Sold as “for safety / insurance reasons”. Does creative work need a backup driver? (Given that it’s good enough.)
Yup. This is going to be an interesting century for sure.
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Yeah, we have those too. My observation was that it seems like the employers have also banded together to present a united front against the Union… which would be unlawful here.
So basically if you’re not a showrunner, there’s little value in an individual? Sounds… depressing.
Based i what I’ve seen so far, I think we’ll see a movie I’d like to watch that’s generated by AI off a human script a long time before one generated by a human off an AI script.
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Let’s unpack this a little.
First, on the face of it – YES! Studios want originality because they accept that the audience wants something fresh and surprising.
At the same time, the audience also wants something familiar and pleasing.
It’s that balance between the familiar and the original that makes it so difficult to write a big Hollywood movie.
Sometimes you get something so original that the audience doesn’t get it – like VALERIAN. And sometimes you get something so familiar that audiences are bored with it, like SHAZAM 2.
But other times, you get something like EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE that manages to thread the needle and be both familiar and novel.
So, yeah, the studios don’t like originality, but they know they need it.
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They’re allowed to do that here because it’s seen as a way to accelerate the resolution of the dispute. All the major players are on board.
It is a way to accelerate resolution… just not to the benefit of the writers.
Well done me for being too talentless to be affected! 