Hollywood screenwriters are on strike for better pay, but their conflict with studios and streaming platforms is also highlighting something they find insulting: the possibility that artificial intelligence (AI) will soon do its job. ability to imitate human dialogues, programs like ChatGPT aroused fear in many sectors: last week, the White House summoned the technology giants to discuss potential risks. everyone, especially after the failure of negotiations between the studios, the platforms and the Writers Guild of America (WGA), the powerful union representing 11,500 writers in the audiovisual industry, which began the strike on May 2.”Art cannot be created by a machine”, criticizes Eric Heisserer, author of the script for the film “Blind Blind” (2018), which was an audience success with Sandra Bullock on Netflix. “We lost the heart and soul of the story”, he told France -Presse (AFP) a picket line in Hollywood, noting that the second letter of the acronym AI stands for ‘artificial’. The syndicate does not want a robotic production to qualify as “literary” or “source” material, terms that earn copyright payments. It also wants to prevent scripts written by its members from being used to train an AI program. So glad they offered to organize a meeting about how they are using it against us!” commented Heisserer wryly.
concerns
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Among the screenwriters interviewed by the AFP, very few imagine an AI capable of doing its job. But the mere fact that studios and platforms were willing to explore the topic struck them as an affront. They fear that executives are willing to make creative compromises to improve profitability. series seasons on increasingly shorter streaming platforms. And big studios like Disney are laying off staff to appease investors. Last week, comments at the Milken Institute’s global conference in Beverly Hills stoked writers’ concerns. written by AI, (and it will be) a good movie”, assured film producer Todd Lieberman. , added Rob Wade, an executive at Fox. Within ten years, “AI will be able to do absolutely all these things”, he insisted. The studios also assure that the WGA does not reject AI as much as they claim. that screenwriters don’t want to ban AI and seem content to use it “as part of their creative process” as long as it doesn’t affect their pay.
“Safeguards”
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For Leila Cohan, who wrote the hit series “Bridgerton”, the only use for the AI would be to assign it “tedious” or random tasks, such as suggesting character names. to make the first drafts of scripts “incredibly bad with AI and then hire writers to rewrite them”. “It’s really good that we address this now,” he said. . At the time, Netflix was taking its first steps and the WGA was making money with reruns, now considered very unprofitable. Science fiction writer Ben Ripley also considers it “very necessary” to legislate today “to establish safeguards” in relation to AI, even though, according to him, has nothing to do with the creative process. Authors “must be original”, he points out. “AI is the antithesis of originality”, he concludes.