The Writers Guild of America proposes allowing AI in writing as long as the human writer receives credit

[Kisai]

 

Summary

 The Writers Guild of America proposes allowing AI in writing as long as the human writer receives credit

 

Quotes

Quote

The guild had previously indicated that it would propose regulating the use of AI in the writing process, which has recently surfaced as a concern for writers who fear losing out on jobs.

 

But contrary to some expectations, the guild is not proposing an outright ban on the use of AI technology.

 

Instead, the proposal would allow a writer to use ChatGPT to help write a script without having to share writing credit or divide residuals. Or, a studio executive could hand the writer an AI-generated script to rewrite or polish and the writer would still be considered the first writer on the project.

 

My thoughts

Given the recent happenings with the copyright office,(link) where AI generated works are not eligible for copyright because they are not human, it makes me wonder how this will shake out. Does assigning the credit to a human, even if the human only made a trivial change to it, sufficient to offer copyright protection to the writing? Or would projects that use AI not be considered protected by copyright at all?

 

While I think the WGA is at least on the right leg here, the human responsible for cleaning up and making the incoherently verbose AI writing into something more suitable for television and film scripts, I think this is no different from the AI art generators. ChatGPT may be able to create questions for Jeopardy and that won't matter, but if it's creating an entire script for a television, it's likely going to run afoul of the script supervisor asking for substantial changes as the AI will not remember anything between AI inference sessions.

 

Sources

 https://variety.com/2023/biz/news/writers-guild-artificial-intelligence-proposal-1235560927/

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/wga-ban-ai-created-works-negotiations-1235358617/

https://gizmodo.com/ai-chatgpt-screenplay-hollywood-writers-guild-1850251985

 

https://www.sagaftra.org/sag-aftra-statement-use-artificial-intelligence-and-digital-doubles-media-and-entertainment

Please note that the viewpoints on this story alternate between WGA and SAG-AFTRA, but for the purposes of this story, this is about WGA screenwriters being paid if they use AI.

 

 

 

[Zodiark1593]

So long as the human performs the final editing, I don’t object. 
 

I question if this is even a practical issue, however. Can a writer (particularly the freelance type) simply opt to not disclose use of/assistance by AI? Assuming editing is performed by a human, and sources are checked, the end result should be indistinguishable from an article without AI assistance. 

[jaslion]

For now I'd say having ANY AI influence means no copyright is a safe bet to calm down the overwhelming wave that is ai. Just to give some time to adjust and correctly implement it as a tool to enhance instead of replace.

 

As right now its mainly being used to get rid of these "pesky creative types" which is like the opposite of what it should do.

 

I know damn well ai is here to stay and as an artist myself I'll need time to implement it and let things adjust by themselves as right now there is a massive wave of asking for retouching of ai crap for cheap as its assumed its easy to do as there is already a finished result whilst in the end its basically starting over from 0 and making it again correctly most of the time. Which isnt understood well by clients. So just a small break in sorting stuff like that out would be great.

[mr moose]

I think it would be funny and probably even have a certain amount of Karma to it if the big movie studios suddenly could claim DMCA on their latest blockbuster.

 

 

[jagdtigger]

5 hours ago, jaslion said:

For now I'd say having ANY AI influence means no copyright is a safe bet

Id say the safest bet is to permanently  bar any work from being copyrightable if AI was used in any form and/or in any capacity. Its a can of worms we should reseal ASAP before any more worms escape.

[jaslion]

5 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

Id say the safest bet is to permanently  bar any work from being copyrightable if AI was used in any form and/or in any capacity. Its a can of worms we should reseal ASAP before any more worms escape.

Basically what I mean.

 

But I will add the extension of:

 

Get the worms back in a can, make a nice worm bin with compost, put the worms in and maintain it a bit and see if things go well.

 

If it fails it was nice and boxed (limited personal relevancy) in with safety measures (no copyright)

 

If it's a success start slowly introducing the worms to the big compost heap

[05032-Mendicant-Bias]

2 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

Id say the safest bet is to permanently  bar any work from being copyrightable if AI was used in any form and/or in any capacity. Its a can of worms we should reseal ASAP before any more worms escape.

That's not going to work. Your only success would be selecting for people that use ML and lie about using ML.

[Holmes108]

13 minutes ago, 05032-Mendicant-Bias said:

That's not going to work. Your only success would be selecting for people that use ML and lie about using ML.

 

Yep, like basically every technological advancement, there is no putting the genie back in the bottle. If you don't do it, someone else will.

[cj09beira]

considering the quality of scripts these days, That whole "Writer's market" is in need of a serious wake up call.

Though AI would probably still make even worse scripts though hard to imagine.

[05032-Mendicant-Bias]

4 hours ago, cj09beira said:

considering the quality of scripts these days, That whole "Writer's market" is in need of a serious wake up call.

Though AI would probably still make even worse scripts though hard to imagine.

Folding Ideas has a great video about Amazon's Audible audiobook scams.

[ouroesa]

They havnt writtent anything worth my time in a long while (that I can think of). Think they are just shitting themselves as they can see the writing on the wall.

[Brooksie359]

On 3/23/2023 at 11:58 PM, jaslion said:

For now I'd say having ANY AI influence means no copyright is a safe bet to calm down the overwhelming wave that is ai. Just to give some time to adjust and correctly implement it as a tool to enhance instead of replace.

 

As right now its mainly being used to get rid of these "pesky creative types" which is like the opposite of what it should do.

 

I know damn well ai is here to stay and as an artist myself I'll need time to implement it and let things adjust by themselves as right now there is a massive wave of asking for retouching of ai crap for cheap as its assumed its easy to do as there is already a finished result whilst in the end its basically starting over from 0 and making it again correctly most of the time. Which isnt understood well by clients. So just a small break in sorting stuff like that out would be great.

That is dumb idea tbh. Never in history has fighting technology rather than adapting ever worked well. This change is to allow people to use AI as a tool without having to lose copyright. The future is AI even if you don't like it. Reminds me of drafters back in the day who were very upset about computers taking over alot of drafting work but what really ended up happening is drafters just used computers to make their jobs way easier. Drafters in this case are people who draw plans on paper that are to scale for things like construction drawings. 

[Sauron]

If the tool gives you something you can use as-is I really don't think it makes sense to force a human in the process; however I think the person who prompted the tool as well as anyone who made changes to the final output should be given appropriate credit for doing so. I have strong doubts that AI generated scripts will ever be good enough to be used without significant human intervention due to the way GPT models work (although who knows, never say never) so for the time being it's likely a moot point anyway. And I suggest the "writer's guild" to focus on, say, making sure authors don't starve due to lacking social programs when they can't get a job rather than try and forbid the use of tools to force said writers into jobs that would otherwise not be needed.

[Taf the Ghost]

45 minutes ago, Sauron said:

If the tool gives you something you can use as-is I really don't think it makes sense to force a human in the process; however I think the person who prompted the tool as well as anyone who made changes to the final output should be given appropriate credit for doing so. I have strong doubts that AI generated scripts will ever be good enough to be used without significant human intervention due to the way GPT models work (although who knows, never say never) so for the time being it's likely a moot point anyway. And I suggest the "writer's guild" to focus on, say, making sure authors don't starve due to lacking social programs when they can't get a job rather than try and forbid the use of tools to force said writers into jobs that would otherwise not be needed.

It depends on what content you're looking at. I wouldn't be surprised if 2 writers + ChatGPT couldn't replace a writing staff of 13-15 with ease, given the general quality of most writing these days. Oddly enough, given the current way major Hollywood productions are being constructed, ChatGPT might come up with better ideas to stitch together whatever set piece was decided before the script was written.

 

Mind you, writing is normally about the cheapest era of Media production but is generally the most consequential to product outcome quality. Nothing about most modern Media Production actually revolves around that reality, but that's why we're also in an exploding media bubble. These trends aren't unrelated. 

[Sauron]

5 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

It depends on what content you're looking at. I wouldn't be surprised if 2 writers + ChatGPT couldn't replace a writing staff of 13-15 with ease, given the general quality of most writing these days. Oddly enough, given the current way major Hollywood productions are being constructed, ChatGPT might come up with better ideas to stitch together whatever set piece was decided before the script was written.

Mehhhh, creativity is not the strong suit of GPT at all. If you tell them the summary it may be able to produce something usable, but then you need to have already thought about and written said summary. It could speed up the process but not much more. It could definitely replace the intern who just has to transcribe the main writer's notes but not the main writer themselves.

 

Also say what you will about holliwood productions but I guarantee you there's a room full of people painstakingly going over every line to make sure it fits within the boundaries set by the producers and also that it fulfills a set of parameters that are expected to drive mass appeal. If there is a problem it's a lack of risktaking, not a lack of effort.

[Taf the Ghost]

6 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Mehhhh, creativity is not the strong suit of GPT at all. If you tell them the summary it may be able to produce something usable, but then you need to have already thought about and written said summary. It could speed up the process but not much more. It could definitely replace the intern who just has to transcribe the main writer's notes but not the main writer themselves.

 

Also say what you will about holliwood productions but I guarantee you there's a room full of people painstakingly going over every line to make sure it fits within the boundaries set by the producers and also that it fulfills a set of parameters that are expected to drive mass appeal. If there is a problem it's a lack of risktaking, not a lack of effort.

Upwards of half (or more) of major films are being reshot in pickups lately. This is the reason for "why did this movie cost 200 million to make?" question of late. Though, hilariously enough, you can blame the writers strike from... 2008? on part of why they do that now. Transformers 2 never really had a script. They had pre-production set pieces and basically winged the entire thing days before shooting. It made bank. The wrong lesson was taken, mostly as it might be one of the worst scripts ever put to a profitable movie.

 

Now, this is actually a function of shortened pre-production and writers basically just having to wing it without enough time to actually adjust the scripts (and terrible Producers), but the X to Y to Z function of pre-designed set pieces actually fits with what ChatGPT has seemed to be good at, so far.  It'll just be rehashing that which already exists, so we'll know when it's being heavily used because everything is probably going to be Star Wars for about 4 years.

 

The real question will be if it can regularly write jokes. My real hope is it brings up the baseline quality of scripts. That's been sinking badly for a while.