‘Plagiarism machines’: Writers, studios battle over future of AI

Hollywood writers have for decades penned sci-fi scripts featuring machines taking over the world. Now, they are fighting to make sure robots do not take their jobs.

The Writers Guild of America (WGA) is seeking to restrict the use of artificial intelligence in writing film and television scripts. Hollywood studios, battling to make streaming services profitable and dealing with shrinking ad revenues, have rejected that idea, saying they would be open to discussing new technologies once a year, according to the guild. A spokesperson for the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which is negotiating the contract on behalf of the studios, did not comment.

WGA chief negotiator Ellen Stutzman said some members have another term for AI: “plagiarism machines.We have made a reasonable proposal that the company should keep AI out of the business of writing television and movies and not try and replace writers,” she said.

The dispute over AI is one of several issues that led Hollywood’s film and TV writers to strike on Monday. Although the issue is one of the last items described in a WGA summary of negotiating points, many of which focus on improving compensation in the streaming era, the debate over AI’s role in the creative process will determine the future of entertainment for decades to come.

Screenwriter John August said writers have two concerns regarding AI. “We don’t want our material feeding them, and we also don’t want to be fixing their sloppy first drafts,” he said.

‘Last bastion’
“The problem here seems to be that we thought that creativity, per se, was the last bastion, the line in the sand, that would stop machines from replacing someone’s job,” said Mike Seymour, co-founder of Motus Lab at the University of Sydney, who has a background in visual effects and AI and has consulted with several studios. AI can help writers break “the blank piece of paper phenomenon,” Seymour said, and it’s good at what he describes as “pantomime,” or producing straight-forward, blunt dialogue, though it lacks nuance.

Writers fear they will be sidelined, or at least, shortchanged.

“What (AI) could do is spew out a garbled piece of work,” said Warren Leight, a screenwriter who served as showrunner and executive producer of the NBC drama Law & Order: SVU.

The union proposed that material generated by an AI system could not be considered “literary material” or “source material,” terms already defined in their contract. As a practical matter, that means that if a studio executive were to hand a writer an AI-generated script to revise, the writer could not be paid a lower rewrite or polish rate.
The union is arguing existing scripts should not be used to train artificial intelligence, which would open the door to intellectual property theft.

“We call it the ‘Nora Ephron problem,’ ”August said, referring to the writer of romantic comedy hits including When Harry Met Sally. “One can imagine a studio training an AI on all of Nora Ephron’s scripts, and having it write a comedy in her voice. Our proposals would prevent that.” Business Standard