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Hollywood Writers Strike Over Pay Disputes with Streaming Giants, AI Concerns (gizmodo.com) 101

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
The Writers Guild of America, the union that bargains on behalf of Hollywood's screenwriters, has called a strike after negotiations with major studios failed to produce a favorable contract this week. From a report: The strike, which is the first involving WGA to occur in 15 years, seeks to bring firms to the table on a host of issues, including higher pay and better working conditions. But some of the issues are quite unique in the annals of modern labor disputes and have to do with technological changes currently disrupting the entertainment industry -- such as the role artificial intelligence may play in future screenwriting projects. "Though our Negotiating Committee began this process intent on making a fair deal, the studios' responses have been wholly insufficient given the existential crisis writers are facing," the WGA tweeted late Monday evening. "Picketing will begin Tuesday afternoon."

Negotiations between WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers -- the trade organization that represents the movie and streaming studios in contract negotiations -- have been ongoing for the past month but the deadline for a new contract was midnight on Tuesday morning. In its own statement, the AMPTP claimed that it had presented a "comprehensive package proposal" to the Guild and that it had been willing to "improve that offer" but claimed that the "magnitude of other proposals" that the union had made were untenable. "The AMPTP member companies remain united in their desire to reach a deal that is mutually beneficial to writers and the health and longevity of the industry," said the organization, which represents the likes of Netflix, Disney, Apple, Amazon, Sony and other entertainment giants. The New York Times adds: The dispute has pitted 11,500 screenwriters against the major studios, including old guard entertainment companies like Universal and Paramount as well as tech industry newcomers like Netflix, Amazon and Apple.
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Hollywood Writers Strike Over Pay Disputes with Streaming Giants, AI Concerns More

Hollywood Writers Strike Over Pay Disputes with Streaming Giants, AI Concerns

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  • Perhaps (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ozzymodus12 ( 8111534 ) on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @09:14AM (#63491144)
    They should try writing better stories instead of worrying about AI. If AI can compete with them, I don't think I'd care to watch anything they made either.

    • IF AI can do it better, then the writers SHOULD be replaced.

      Actual Storytelling requires talent that a lot of Hollywood doesn't have. e.g. They just rehash Fast/Furious franchise well past when it jumped the shark to the 11th degree.

      Marvel, Starwars, Middle Earth, Startrek ....

      • They just rehash Fast/Furious franchise well past when it jumped the shark to the 11th degree.

        What? What are you talking about? What part of this doesn't seem realistic to you? [youtube.com] That is grade-A story telling right there. The best science fiction available, better than Ray Bradbury.

      • Who is watching Fast and the Furious for the plot. It's okay to have action spectacle and if the script is a bit campy in the same vein those films have been, then that's okay as well. It's like complaining that a Bond film has spy gadgets that couldn't actually be real. Schlock is as much of an art form as a period piece drama and well written and acted films of any genre can be great.
    • Every one of the comments in here is about AI, but there have been periodic writers' strikes for many many decades. Not saying AI isn't a factor, but change is never-ending, and things have to be re-negotiated once in a while.

      Doing the best work in the world won't ensure you get diddly squat. If you lie down and let somebody else keep all the value you created, they will.

      • Pretty much this. It's been a similar issue in streaming services for some time as well. Though as usual, it feels like this community is missing the forest for the trees.

        My main issue with this debate is that even when you have quality writers putting out exceptional/excellent content, the AI can just be trained off of them. Sure, current iterations don't quite capture the nuances of a professionally made script, but what's not to say they'll eventually get there? Future ML techniques could allow it so tha

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          LLMs can only reproduce. Sure they can do variations, swap out locations and characters, but the basic story, the structure, is all copied.

          Even with drama based on real life, the writer has to decide what elements are important, how to make the story accessible, which characters to include and which to condense or omit. LLMs can't do that, all they can do is blindly mimic what writers did without understanding why they did it.

          Of course most TV is crap, so AI is perfect for it. An LLM won't spit out the next

    • Perhaps you should not allow yourself to be baited into bike shedding over AI as if it was the entire dispute.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      A lot of poor writing is actually down to forces outside the writer's room. Studio execs and market researchers who think they know what people want, budgetary constraints limiting what the writers can do, actors hired more for their looks than their ability.

      AI won't make any of that better, it will make it worse. AI won't push back or try to salvage what it can, it will do as it is told.

  • AI concerns? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by RogueWarrior65 ( 678876 )

    Are they worried that AI will write content that is actually good? Just sayin'. That said, they should be worried because striking Hollywood actors is why there's a constant flood of dreadful faux reality shows. People in reality shows weren't getting residuals i.e. getting paid long after the work was done aka nice work if you can get it. Like it or not, AI is going to write scripts and stories and will probably use proper English and grammar to do so (unless otherwise instructed to do so). AI could e

    • "Are they worried that AI will write content that is actually good?"

      More like the AI will write content that is as good as they can do. Plus the AI will be faster, and of course it will work cheaper. Your point that the AI will avoid plot holes and contradictions with previous episodes is also valid.

      Now, can the AI do the cinematographer's job?

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by TWX ( 665546 )

        I doubt that AI will avoid plot-holes and continuity errors.

        Remember, AI was/is trained off of existing work. And I cannot think of a single franchise that managed to avoid those unless the show was on for such a short run that it didn't have enough episodes to have continuity violations. And any show short enough to not have continuity violations will inevitably have plot-holes or other unresolved storylines.

        You'd have to train AI on TV Tropes, and it would probably suicide itself after having gone down

        • There just isn't any good reason to avoid plot holes and continuity errors. The most popular genre of film in the last decade is superhero movies, which basically dispense with any pretense of being constrained by physics or logic, since somebody can always go back in time or come back from the dead or suddenly be in a separate dimension of time and space if needed.

          Just make the audience identify with one or more characters, and then make good or bad stuff happen to them, and you are all set.

      • Re: AI concerns? (Score:1, Troll)

        by PPH ( 736903 )

        More like the AI will write content that is as good as they can do.

        But not as up to date. It's my understanding that ChatGPT (and other) LLMs are trained with data in a sort of batch mode. Once the data collection and training is done, they cease to update their models with current events.

        So ChatGPT could write Slashdot articles for years to come. But it would miss Biden's increasingly rapid slide in cognitive function. Not that the current late night hosts would ever use that material anyway.

      • Your point that the AI will avoid plot holes and contradictions with previous episodes is also valid.

        Not really.

        I've read AI/conversation streams where the AI contradicted itself within sentences.

        There are examples of AI completely fabricating the "facts" in a response.


        Then again, that's actually on par for current human screen writers, so, no change.

      • Hey, AI, design a shot to look like Vilmos Zsigmond would. Easy. Up until now, the video production tools available make doing first-rate production achievable. The exception always seemed to be the music. It's been pretty difficult to simulate a symphony orchestra but I'm predicting that will become easier too.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by canux ( 735734 )
      Write me a response suitable for a Slashdot comment that reads: "Are they worried that AI will write content that is actually good? Just sayin'. That said, they should be worried because striking Hollywood actors is why there's a constant flood of dreadful faux reality shows. People in reality shows weren't getting residuals i.e. getting paid long after the work was done aka nice work if you can get it. Like it or not, AI is going to write scripts and stories and will probably use proper English and gramma

      • See! Same quality or better then what you get out of your typical hollywood production! Since hollywood only peddles in "safe" stuff and just remakes a bunch of stuff, I see no reason not to use AI. AI, much like hollywood, will just give us the same old same old. Why pay a premium when it's not original anyway.

      • The key word there is "residuals". Why is it that creative types seem to think that they should be paid every time their work appears on TV and elsewhere? The people who designed my truck don't get paid every time I drive it. I don't get paid every time someone uses my software or my robots.

        • The people who designed my truck don't get paid every time I drive it.

          Except the automotive market is trying to push itself into a subscription model where you don’t own your own car. Instead it’s manufactured with everything and it’s disabled unless you either pay a monthly fee, or if you sell the vehicle and they find out it’s disabled until the new owner pays up again. It’s why I refuse to buy BMW, Tesla, or any other company pushing that garbage. I just wish more people pushed back because the only way I’ll own nothing and be happy i

          • Yes, this is a very disturbing trend. The MBA at Harvard who came up with this business model should be publicly flogged.

        • The key word there is "residuals". Why is it that creative types seem to think that they should be paid every time their work appears on TV and elsewhere?

          For the same reason authors get money when a book sells?

          • But they don't get money every time someone reads it. Once you buy it, it's yours to do with what you want including giving it to someone else to read.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by KlomDark ( 6370 )

          Because every time their work appears on TV, someone is making money off it. Why shouldn't they?

          Fucking software developers should have stuck to this ethos as well.

          • Presumably the company showing something on TV paid for the rights to do so. If the writers aren't getting a cut of that they signed a bad contract years ago. Unless the license the television network paid for requires some amount per broadcast instead of just a flat fee, there's really not a lot to go on. A streaming service isn't much different. The number of people listening to the radio at the time a song was played doesn't change the musician's compensation.

    • Are they worried that AI will write content that is actually good?

      Remember the old joke "I could eat a can of alphabet soup and crap out a better line than that"? Maybe AI could digitally crap out better scripts than what we're seeing. Especially considering how formulaic most screenwriting is. That's something that automation could certainly adapt to.

      And in other fields, especially journalism, we're seeing that AI can replace human writers and no one is noticing the difference.

      • Van Ling always said "I could eat raw film stock and sh*t a better movie". Yes, screenwriting is formulaic but the better writers have a distinctive style so AI could learn those styles and come up with new ones that combine different styles.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      Most of what they write is fiction. It is perfect for AI, no facts to get in the way.

    • Are they worried that AI will write content that is actually good?

      Not exactly. It's more to do with attribution and attempting to reduce the credit writers get by claiming AI provided significant story contributions. In other words, if a studio can prompt a bunch of AI ideas and then have a writer punch out a script then they could claim it as their own IP and reduce royalties to writers, or similarly just do a rewrite of someone else's script then they can claim in arbitration that there were significant changes and credit should be reconsidered. They're not trying to b

  • pro sports can fill the gap on OTA and basic channels right as the RSN's die.

  • If the writers are on strike, wouldn't that encourage the industry to invest in AI writing technology to supplement the work that the writers aren't doing?

    • Re:Catch-22 (Score:5, Informative)

      by TWX ( 665546 ) on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @09:43AM (#63491248)

      The point of the strike is to contractually obligate the studios to swear-off AI before it's mature enough to actually provide useful output.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by sarren1901 ( 5415506 )

        It likely already can produce good enough output. Hire a few fresh college grads to use the AI and away you go. Thing about movies and media, it doesn't even need to be factual or overly coherent. AI is great at making up bullshit so it should be perfect to replace most of what hollywood produces.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by TWX ( 665546 )

          eh, I donno about that.

          Jill Bearup did a review of an AI-generated faux-Jill-Bearup, the AI script basically missed the mark. Some of Bearup's mannerisms were caught but it wrote like it was pulling lines from one of those women's magazines, and repeated the same hackneyed expressions far too many times in the course of the five minute script.

          It's not ready for prime-time.

          • It's not ready for prime-time.

            True, but it might be ready for the Hallmark Channel.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by TWX ( 665546 )

              Don't even need AI for Hallmark Channel. Just play mad-libs with the names, the locations, and the ailing-issue that serves as the macguffin to drive the plot. the actual dialogue can be identical, no one would care.

      • Similar to Co bringing in a cheaper foreign trainee. Teach them, send them back to cheaper country. Now your position eliminated. Make you dig your own hole. Escape before this trap if possible. But lose benefits and take risk at new job as well.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by PPH ( 736903 )

        contractually obligate the studios to swear-off AI

        Existing studios. If a new studio is formed with the idea that they will use AI writers from the get-go and this strike wipes out the older studios, what then?

  • I wish the Writers all the best (Score:5, Interesting)

    by nucrash ( 549705 ) on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @09:25AM (#63491186)

    I am shocked by the amount of disdain for writers trying to get ahead. They have the creative talent to entertain.
    Considering the amount of thought goes into various scripts, I appreciate what they do. I hope they excel and get their due.

    • Re:I wish the Writers all the best (Score:4, Interesting)

      by TWX ( 665546 ) on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @09:50AM (#63491272)

      Eh. I have mixed feelings on the writers in the modern era of serialized TV. When TV was more episodic and the order of watching the shows didn't matter so much, there was a lot more room for exploring storylines that didn't necessarily have to contribute to the showrunner's ideal for Where The Story Was Going. That doesn't mean that there weren't overarching themes and some intended goal, but there was a lot more opportunity for new foils along the way that didn't have to become integral to the identity of the show.

      As an example, the X-Files featured the overarching situation with the pending invasion of Earth, but this wasn't touched-on in most episodes, and in many more episodes it was only lightly touched-on, sometimes with as little as Cancer Man sitting in with Skinner. And consequently there were lots of wonderful episodes that could forget the overarching theme and just have a little fun.

      And as a result the lack of having to pay heed to the major arc, lots of different writers could contribute stories, they didn't all have to be written by a showrunner and his or her close team. That left the showrunner time and effort to refine the major theme without necessarily having to pay such close attention to every single little thing.

      • The Monster of the Week episodes of X-Files were afforded by 20+ episode seasons. A lot of serialized shows today have half the number of episodes per season. They play for a few weeks, go on hiatus, and then come back for sweeps. Even streaming-first shows do 12 episode seasons.

        There's no longer space in schedules to tell MOTW stories. These sort of side tracks were where a lot of character development would happen. B-stories could be told. Even recurring characters could get an entire episode of their own

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by TWX ( 665546 )

          I guess this is why I'm a bit down on watching most new TV for the last decade+. The MOTW stories were usually the fun stories, that made me actually want to watch the show. Thinking back to Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Captain's Holiday", "Starship Mine", "Measure of a Man", and "The Offspring" were all wonderful episodes that weren't specifically intended to craft multiepisode story arcs, even if there was a revisit to "Captain's Holiday" that tied it in to the greater story with Q.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Could you please point me to worthwhile content that these writers have created in recent years? Because I sure haven't found it.

      • The Mandalorian is pretty entertaining. I was never a huge Star Wars fan but the series is pretty much a western in space. The Last Of Us was excellent. It didn't even need to rely much on the zombies. The set designers did a great job with the decayed cities and shopping mall. Can't forget about the first season of Westworld either.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Opportunist ( 166417 )

      Have you watched some of the shows lately? The stories are so formulaic and derivative that you can usually predict what will come next up until the very end. It's been a long, long while since I was actually genuinely surprised by a "plot twist".

      And I'm not even talking about those rehashed, rebooted, redone and regurgitated movies that butcher the classics that actually had creative writers.

    • Mostly, that "creative talent" is a pool of writers hashing out the rough connections between a plethora of snapshots of pieces of the film so the "story" can be stitched into the currently desired message.

      Good examples of this are the latest Indiana Jones movie and both tepid-at-best Rings of Fire and Willow.

      Those are the current peak of writing for film.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kackle ( 910159 )
      What I've not heard in these discussions are numbers... Are they paid well now? They struck last time for the same reason, if I recall: Pay from on-line show distributions.

    • I have a disdain for blackmailing and monopolization. That's what unions are.

  • save the world" - Heroes (2006-2010) though should have been pronounced dead in season 2 with the 2007 writers strike.
  • They can't write anything worse, at least maybe when AI rehashes an entire plot or series they will actually add something to it that doesn't have a brainwashing agenda.

  • Let's be honest, if you're in what is supposedly a creative position and you're threatened by a machine, you're not very creative in the first place. If your stories are so formulaic that they can be scripted, I think you should be eliminated.

  • There is unrest in the forest
    There is trouble with the trees
    For the maples want more sunlight
    And the oaks ignore their pleas
    The trouble with the maples
    And they're quite convinced they're right
    They say the oaks are just too lofty
    And they grab up all the light
    But the oaks can't help their feelings
    If they like the way they're made
    And they wonder why the maples
    Can't be happy in their shade
    There is trouble in the forest
    And the creatures all have fled
    As the maples scream "Oppression"
    And the oaks just shake their

    • Out of interest, I asked chatgpt to write something in a similar style about the current screenwriters strike. With zero additional context, it generated this. In the heart of the guild hall Tension rises, stakes are high For the screenwriters fight for justice But a new force takes the sky The trouble with the writers And they're quite convinced they're right They say the studios exploit them And they hold their future tight But the studios found a secret A solution so profound AI's pen, it weaves a stor

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by PPH ( 736903 )

        It's a shame Bob Rivers retired and quit making song parodies (Twisted Tunes). I'm sure he would have loved to get a Rush tribute band and record this to "Trees".

      • Quoting so I can find it again.

        In the heart of the guild hall
        Tension rises, stakes are high
        For the screenwriters fight for justice.
        But a new force takes the sky
        The trouble with the writers
        And they're quite convinced they're right
        They say the studios exploit them
        And they hold their future tight
        But the studios found a secret
        A solution so profound
        AI's pen, it weaves a story
        Without a human writer's sound
        There is panic in the guild hall
        As the words begin to fade
        For the AI's growing stronger
        And the writers feel b

    • A pruned tree is a healthy tree.

  • ...US productivity soars in the second quarter.

    • Not really. There's more television content (and a lot of it quite good) that if nothing new were produced until the end of time, I still wouldn't be able to get through all of the stuff that's already out there. If I only wanted to watch about an hour of TV per day, I could spend about an entire year just watching episodes of the Simpsons that have been made to this point.

  • Seriously.
    The world would be better off without this crowd.
    Let the entertainment industry rot for a few years.

  • I'm tired of what used to take one or two episodes in a series now taking a whole "season" of ten episodes. Boring. Drawn out character dynamics that go into every little useless detail just to make the story last longer, etc.. Good shows and movies have been harder and harder to find for the past 25 years, right around the time "reality" TV started making an appearance. Coincidence? When I need a good laugh I watch a few episodes of "Green Acres" or for some damn good writing I'll fire up M.A.S.H.
  • The 2007-2008 Writer’s Strike led Joss Whedon to create Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along blog, which was wonderfully entertaining and very well written considering it had no guild writers. These days it seems relatively easy to not watch TV or movies (even streaming). Despite all the choice, there’s not a lot that I actually would enjoy watching. Maybe getting all the Guild writers out of the way is just what the industry needs to create something good!

  • If the strike goes on long enough, will it lead to increased pregnancies?

  • I know you don't care, but Jazz, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Glenn Miller, were very very popular on the RADIO until approximately 1940. Around that time musicians went on strike, because of "recording". Went on for along time, a year or two.

    Jazz "died" as pop music because of that.

    Say goodbye to screen writers, won't be missed. All of Hollywood will be laid off. More people who won't be missed. I'd say 3-5 years by the time the dust settles on that, but. .. maybe much faster.

    I have no dog in the figh
  • Since the last strike, I have watched very little network scripted shows. Just News and Sports. Scripted stuff comes from Netflix or Amazon. The other problem is the writers jumping from show to show. It makes the stories difficult to follow and content uneven. Good Luck.

  • Hollywood needs to clean house anyways and this seems as good an opportunity as any to do so. They need writers that are more focused on telling compelling stories in fun and/or insightful ways rather than a bunch of activists spitting on half of the country on their quest to tick checkboxes and weave convoluted, dumb as a post narratives. I just rewatched Commando (1985 Schwarzenegger) the other day and it's Shakespeare compared to most of the garbage coming out now days.

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