Generative AI's Inevitable Rise Suddenly Stopped By Pesky Human Creators at the WGA

Hey remember reading about how AI will destroy Hollywood as we know it and change Hollywood forever? Of course you do, people have been making bold assertions like that since, well, yesterday.

And then those darn pesky humans at the Writers Guild of America organized, went on strike, and in a few months, got the world's largest film and TV companies to agree to these highly restrictive terms around AI:

We have established regulations for the use of artificial intelligence (“AI”) on Minimum Basic Agreement-covered projects in the following ways:

AI can’t write or rewrite literary material, and AI-generated material will not be considered source material under the MBA, meaning that AI-generated material can’t be used to undermine a writer’s credit or separated rights. 

A writer can choose to use AI when performing writing services, if the company consents and provided that the writer follows applicable company policies, but the company can’t require the writer to use AI software (e.g., ChatGPT) when performing writing services. 

The Company must disclose to the writer if any materials given to the writer have been generated by AI or incorporate AI-generated material.

The WGA reserves the right to assert that exploitation of writers’ material to train AI is prohibited by MBA or other law.

So I'll just call it right now: The WGA agreement signals the end of generative AI having any chance at becoming a disruptive force in the creation of intellectual property.

Yes yes, programs like Midjourney will be used as visual tools and assistants for professional human artists in many fields, just as LLMs like ChatGPT may help professional human writers do some first draft work on screenplays and such. And that's great!

But with this WGA agreement, it's completely implausible to say anything like, well, AI will destroy Hollywood as we know it and change Hollywood forever.

The irony is while many AI evangelists have been predicting the death of Hollywood for the last few years, they ignored how humans would respond to such claims. Or rally together to change their directory. 

And in this case, it's actually the WGA that is doing Hollywood a favor, preventing them to do anything as disastrous as having ChatGPT write screenplays, when the program is quite literally designed to to produce the most mediocre content you can imagine.

Comments

[irihapeti]

just add

"So I'll just call it right now: The WGA agreement signals the end of generative AI having any chance at becoming a disruptive force in the creation of intellectual property." ... for free

no agreement of any kind can preclude authors from licensing/selling their work for inclusion in AI training programs

is a whole new creative industry on the cusp here. Humans writing educational guides/tutorials for AI entities