Summary of the 2023 WGA MBA

https://www.wgacontract2023.org/the-campaign/summary-of-the-2023-wga-mba

by mattcollins • 3 years ago

36 51 3 years ago

wgacontract2023.org

Per the WGA's summary:

1) 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.

2) 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.

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

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

eps• 3 years ago

It reads like the writers are perfectly fine with the AI for as long as they get to use it.

avereveard• 3 years ago

well yeah it always is about protectionism and barrier to entry

I find it interesting tho that they are not worried about competition between writers within the association, they will have members that decide for using assisted writing and being a lot more productive than others.

pavlov• 3 years ago

Which is how Hollywood has always worked? You can’t do as much as move a light or push “Record” on a film set without being a union member.

The VFX industry has been an exception. But frankly the deteriorating working conditions, rampant outsourcing to semi-shady companies, and just the overall downwards spiral of the quality of VFX in Hollywood movies suggests that maybe it’s not a model to emulate.

dageshi• 3 years ago

I think the issue was in the old rules writers got paid very differently whether they created an original script vs working on an existing script.

The fear was, studio's would use AI to generate a garbage script then pay a writer far less to effectively completely rewrite it to make it usable.

bratbag• 3 years ago

It reads more like writers don't want their work being used as corpus for ai without them getting paid.

Which is fair, in a society where people need money for food and shelter.

JambalayaJim• 3 years ago

That’s entirely the way it should be! AI used to help labour, not subjugate it.

junek• 3 years ago

In the same way I'm OK with knives so long as one isn't being held to my throat.

bayindirh2• 3 years ago

Writers' use of AI is self regulating.

If the writer is completely opposed to AI, they can omit its use, or if they want, they can use the way they see fit, incl. turning it up to 11.

If the writer's quality decreases because of excessive AI use, it's the writer's problem. They need to regulate their use. If the writer can use it to hone their skills, they can profit from it.

From my personal perspective, as a person who doesn't use xGPT or other models because of unethical training from my perspective, this makes sense.

RangerScience• 3 years ago

Yes.

Empowerment of worker (or in this case, creative) = good thing

Replacement of worker = bad thing

This has been the fight over automation since :checks notes: at least 1811 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite

konschubert• 3 years ago

I think this will have 0 effect. Writers that use AI will push some of the writers that don't use AI out of the market.

What exact scenario have they prevented?

At the extreme end, which won't happen but which would be possible under these rules, there could be a single writer who is basically just prompt engineering and reviewing what the AI spits out, for hundreds of shows.

That a studio would use AI to generate a script without the involvement of a single writer? That wasn't going to happen anyways.

So what was the point of this? Is there something I am missing?

SSLy• 3 years ago

how does it work out with something as old as grammarly or the advanced spell/grammar/usage/style checking now rolled into Word?

smeagull• 3 years ago

Can't wait to see how hollywood accounting and business structures run roughshod over this.

ggm• 3 years ago

"Because 50% of the writing was AI the residual has been halved"

SilverBirch2• 3 years ago

I think this is eminently sensible as a solution to this problem. AI is a tool that skilled professionals can use for productivity. This idea that AI was just going to replace writers never really made much sense - the generation of the actual text is only one part of the job and not the important part of the creative process. This way the writers have the freedom to use this new tooling, the Studios don't get to dictate which tools writers use (just like they're not going to insist on you using a specific brand of computer), and if in aggregate this increases productivity... well that's just great, that's the free market. And importantly, the writer is the one using and experiencing the productivity benefit. In aggregate that might drive the total demand for writers down, but again, that's just the free market.

surfingdino2• 3 years ago

I have used AI to produce an audio version and translations of my short story. I am not impressed. The best tools generate audio that is of high quality but missed a lot of the nuance of the written text, sometimes distort simple words. When it comes to translation, 80-90% of the sentences had to be fixed for grammar, spelling or other reasons (modifications to the meaning of the sentence, bad handling of gender in gendered languages. I came to the conclusion that writers, editors, proofreaders, and translators have nothing to fear from AI. I also noticed that AI is programmed to avoid getting its creators into legal/PR trouble. For example, if you ask AI to perform certain editing jobs on a piece of content that may be somehow connected to a political or a religious issue it will refuse to do so. Not much help if you want to produce a piece of writing that may be a commentary on such issues, be it an article or a screenplay.

famouswaffles3• 3 years ago

Doesn't say much if we don't know what AI you're talking about? The best LLM is far ahead of everything else. If it's GPT-4, translation, editing, proofreading is definitely something to fear.

indigochill2• 3 years ago

For example, if you ask AI to perform certain editing jobs on a piece of content that may be somehow connected to a political or a religious issue it will refuse to do so.

Some AI services (especially those run as services by megacorps with lively legal departments) are gimped this way (usually as a sort of "thought police" model running on top of the core model, as I understand), but once you get to self-hostable models not all have such limitations.

mjan226402• 3 years ago

This idea that AI was just going to replace writers never really made much sense

I disagree. Despite the first taste of the technology cannot completely replace humans, it will get there in an imho relatively short time from now.

js8• 3 years ago

When is AI going to replace the rentier class? That should be straightforward, no?

qp11• 3 years ago

Fundamental problem is oversupply of content. Information Overload leading to Attention Theft games.

Its like the Chinese real estate market where more houses have been built than people available. Same story with content and eyeballs available.

Its an extremely unstable demand-supply equation. And it will break down until new ideas about the supply side emerge.

autoexec4• 3 years ago

If using AI suddenly means that writers can instantly produce billions of acceptable scripts, the problem will just shift to selecting the good ones from the garbage. I'm not that confident in AI's ability to produce quality writing.

SilverBirch2• 3 years ago

I think this is true, and nothing to do with AI. Netflix bought Big Tech money to hollywood and made it rain. Then all the traditionally media companies followed, creating a bidding war for content. It's probably not popular to say, but the last 5 years have probably been a golden age for hollywood, and some people like Shonda Rhymes have made out like bandits, some people like Megan Markle have literally robbed Netflix blind. But it's all going the other way now, and that's going to be massive downward pressure on the industry, at best AI is a good way of protecting Disney's stock price.

rg111• 3 years ago

What about the SAG-AFTRA? Have they reached any agreement regarding AI?

When AI became plausible and produced full body deepfakes, I concluded that it was only a matter of time to use AI to extend and emulate real actors.

The sensible agreement should have been that an actor, via an agency, or a software stack, will control their full body AI avatar. And they will license them to studios for a movie or a commercial ad. They will charge maybe 20%-90% of the fees that they receive.

BUT, it blew my mind that studios were audacious enough to float the idea or propose that actors will be paid a small hourly wage or minimum wage for small actors for scanning their bodies, and after that the studios get to keep and use the digital avatar for perpetuity for free.

Whoa!

I was shocked to learned that. There was, as expected, dispute.

What happened to that part?

thehodge• 3 years ago

That's next, they were only dealing with one union at once.

kepler12• 3 years ago

# of Episodes, Minimum # of writers in writers’ room

---------------------------------

6 or fewer, 3

7-12, 5

13+, 6

Minimum number of writers? Ok, go ahead and tell me that union labor isn't about padding payrolls.

autoexec4• 3 years ago

Protections against being under-staffed and overworked seems like exactly the kind of thing you'd want in a contract.

That doesn't seem unreasonable to me. I mean, one person could probably come up with six scripts given enough time, but having input from other writers is likely to be very helpful. Even if you thought collaboration had no value whatsoever, having 3 people each working on a script at once means your entire 6 episode season gets done that much faster. Plus you figure life happens and people get sick, need days off, etc. Having more than one body in the writer's room still seems like a good idea.

kepler12• 3 years ago

Why should the contract have to dictate that, when it's the production that would have to pay/suffer if they shortsightedly understaffed something? The writers have sick days and time off protections already. Seems to me this is about guaranteeing employment. If having more than one body in the writer's room is needed, let the production decide that or live with the consequences.

raverbashing• 3 years ago

"Geez why can't have my facebook clone done in 1 month by just 1 guy and chatgpt right?!"

Writing a script is more involved than it seems, and when push comes to shove I think enforcement of hours/day per script writers is not so great. And you can't come with all ideas by yourself

skywhopper• 3 years ago

Shows are on very tight schedules. It takes a certain amount of work to produce a quality script for an episode. When they are working, they are probably working extremely long hours for days on end. Having a minimum number of writers ensures the quality remains acceptable without overworking individuals.

hoseja• 3 years ago

I don't understand in the slightest how modern "writers" can demand anything at all. Recent scripts everywhere have been disaster after disaster after disaster, with only a handful of mostly indie exceptions.

Kye5• 3 years ago

You have cause and effect confused. The things they struck to stop are why things were getting worse.

Summary of the 2023 WGA MBA

Related Stories