Hollywood writers demanding studios regulate AI

Hollywood’s writers are demanding to write their own happy endings — rather than Artificial Intelligence doing it for them.

Creeped out by advances in scarily realistic computing technology which allows programs to create text very similar to how a human would, script writers are seeking protection from being replaced by machines.

As part of current negotiations between the Writers Guild of America and the major TV and film studios they are demanding better pay and regulation on how AI is used so tech like ChatGPT, Bing and Bard doesn’t eventually take over.

“We just don’t know what the technology will be like months or years from now,” said Michael Weiss, who wrote the 2008 sci-fi thriller “Journey to the Center of the Earth” and other films.

“Do not underestimate the computer’s ability to generate material and take over human capabilities and don’t underestimate any corporation’s desire to save money. 

“With both of these things, you’re going to see an inflection point. How much can we rely on AI to create and who are we going to pay to do it? Those are the big questions.”

AI models take huge amounts of text and data from all over the web to create images, videos or text based on the instructions it is given.

Songs generated by ChatGPT imitating best-selling artists like Drake and The Weeknd have gone viral, while fake pictures of Pope Francis and Donald Trump have fooled users into thinking they were the real thing.

The WGA has said it supports using AI as a tool to assist in rewriting scripts, but members want to make sure writers would still get full credit, even when asked to rewrite content generated by AI.

To help control AI’s influence over scripted work, the WGA demanded that AI-generated material should not be considered “source material,” such as novels, plays and magazine articles which a screenplay can be based on.

The guild is also pushing for AI-content not to be labeled as “literary material,” which includes original screenplays, stories and dialogue.

In a Tweet posted on March 22, the Writers Guild of America West noted that AI software “does not create anything” but merely “generates a regurgitation of what it’s fed.”

“In the same way a studio may point to a Wikipedia article, or other research material, and ask the writer to refer to it, they can make the writer aware of the AI-generated content,” officials said. “But, like all research material, it has no role in guild-covered work, not in the chain of title in the intellectual property.”

The Post’s request for comment from the Writers Guild of America was not answered Monday.

Weiss said while the WGA’s decision to include the AI component is “very forward thinking,” negotiations between writers and the major studios might not even keep up with the speed of how AI technology is already changing Hollywood. 

“Ten years ago, people thought the movie ‘HER’ was weird because a guy falls in love  with an operating system,” Weiss said, referring to the 2013 Spike Jonez movie starring Joaquin Phoenix. “And now, it doesn’t seem strange at all.

“Obviously, there is a financial component to this, which is if an AI can rewrite your script faster by feeding it into an algorithm and it does the rewrite … that seems like a possibility one day and it could get very messy.

“But the guild is still interested in protecting its human membership first, and not robots. What I’m happy about is that this is being talked about now because we can’t even predict what will happen with AI three years from now.”