Writers Guild of America Considers Letting AI Write Hollywood Scripts
As Chat-GPT learns more about how to take over the human race, the Writer’s Guild of America is certainly not standing in its way. The labor union, which represents film and television writers, has recently proposed allowing AI like Chat-GPT to write scripts as long as humans get credit for their contributions.
According to Variety, under WGA’s proposal, a human writer could use Chat-GPT to write a script and would not have to share writing credit or any residuals earned from the production. Likewise, a studio could hand an AI-generated script to a human for edits and re-writes, and the human writer would retain credit for being the first writer on the project. More specifically, WGA’s proposal specifies that the AI-generated text should not be considered “literary material” or “source material,” which is an umbrella term for novels, plays, or magazine articles that a screenplay could be based on.
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WGA’s proposal also suggests treating AI less as a creator and more as a tool, which could help writers prevent negotiations with software companies over who actually owns a script or project. The proposal comes as the labor union negotiates a new contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.
“In the same way that 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 AI-generated content,” WGA wrote on Twitter. “But, like all research material, it has no role in guild-covered work, nor in the chain of title in the intellectual property. It is important to note that AI software does not create anything. It generates a regurgitation of what it’s fed.”
The union continued: “If it’s been fed both copyright-protected and public domain content, it cannot distinguish between the two. Its output is not eligible for copyright protection, nor can an AI software program sign a certificate of authorship.”
As Variety points out, WGA has recently called for the regulation of artificial intelligence in professional writing projects, which is timely as a report from Chat-GPT’s overlord OpenAI predicted that 80% of the U.S. workforce could eventually be affected by AI in some capacity. In the paper, which was published by researchers from OpenAI and a researcher from the University of Pennsylvania claims that programmers and writers could see AI significantly impacting their fields in the coming years.
While a coherent script written entirely by an AI might seem farfetched, AI-generated fiction is already causing trouble. The award winning science fiction magazine Clarkesworld closed story submissions from authors after a flood of AI-generated stories inundated the magazine’s inbox.
Want to know more about AI, chatbots, and the future of machine learning? Check out our full coverage of artificial intelligence, or browse our guides to The Best Free AI Art Generators and Everything We Know About OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Update March 23 11:55 a.m. EST: This article was updated to include the Writers Guild of America’s response on Twitter to Variety’s coverage.
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