Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Are human screenwriters being shown the door—right out of the writers’ room? Deposit Photos If you were paying attention to Hollywood, the summer of 2023 was a tough one to forget. As testy negotiations between the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) faltered, the air in Tinseltown buzzed with palpable tension. Screenwriters, many of whom had long felt undervalued and underpaid—despite their crucial role in content creation—united in a show of unprecedented force. The issues at the heart of the conflict were multifaceted: fair compensation in the age of streaming, job security amid technological advancements, and a desire for more control and recognition. As sidewalks on the Sunset Strip cracked under the summer heat, creatives did not. Even when negotiations intensified, they didn’t waver, signaling a defining moment in the ongoing struggle for labor concessions. And while this showdown exemplified a broader call to address long-simmering issues within the industry, a massive component of the strike centered around artificial intelligence. Before jumping into the technological component, we must grok screenwriting as an artistic medium. Unlike poetry or prose, a screenplay isn’t exactly a final product—although to be fair, several terrific scripts I read while working for CAA were literary masterpieces. It’s a shame they were never produced. But that’s another story. Returning to screenwriting, it’s a unique art form. Yes, it depicts a story from beginning, middle, to end, but it’s more of a blueprint than a standalone commodity. (No one buys screenplays to read for fun on their Kindle. Except maybe Quentin Tarantino.) Instead, a screenplay—even a beautifully written one—offers instructions to actors and the production team on how to execute the writer’s vision. MORE FOR YOU See A Total Eclipse Of A Star As Manhattanhenge Returns The Night Sky This Week Samsung Just Confirmed Galaxy Ring Release Date, Feature List And U.S. Sales Biden Vs Trump 2024 Election Polls Biden Leads Major Tracking Poll For First Time In A Month In this sense, screenplays can be highly technical documents, lacking the emotional punch of say, a novel penned by Norman Mailer. Though to be fair, any screenwriter worthy of their craft will thrust the reader into a compelling world of their own creation making them laugh aloud or cry. Sometimes both. Critically, due to screenwriting’s strict technical conventions, it can take years for even seasoned prose writers to hone this challenging medium, making it quite coveted, and highly competitive. This is where AI’s appeal comes in. Emerging AI writing tools can empower newbie screenwriters, especially those who have never dabbled in Final Draft and feel lost with the industry software. How? For one thing, AI provides helpful guidance on industry-standard conventions and tricky formatting, making the scriptwriting process more accessible. What’s more, AI now offers real-time suggestions and corrections, helping beginners produce professional-grade scripts. At least technically. This frees screenwriters to focus more on developing their storytelling prowess. In short, creative ideas can become reality quicker. Of course, once you finally have a script, that’s where the real work begins. Again, the script is just a blueprint for the cinematic house you wish to build. And despite the fact we now have so many technological tools it would boggle the minds of Hitchcock, Welles, and Capra—movie making is still wildly capital intensive. High-quality cameras, lighting, and sound equipment are mission critical and don’t come cheap. Even in 2024, they require hefty rental or purchase costs. Likewise, unless you’re Blair Witching your way to success on a shoestring budget, massive teams must be assembled for the production phase, from editors to producers to cinematographers, sound engineers, gaffers, grips, and set designers. Each of these roles is crucial to producing movie magic. Due to these capital restraints and high barriers to entry, you can’t simply go it alone. This is why gatekeepers, like studios and streamers, play such a big role. It’s also why pent-up screenwriters had to duke it out with them via labor strikes this past summer. Naturally, these creatives have understandable tech gripes. Large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT require massive amounts of data to train effectively—aka replace flesh and blood artisans. Such training, if successfully handled, can enable AI to mimic various forms of writing, including screenwriting. To achieve such intellectual feats, these models are fed datasets containing vast quantities of text from diverse sources. In Hollywood’s case, studios wished to train LLMs on extant screenwriting with copious scripts from movies and TV shows. Gorging on all that screenwriting would supercharge the models’ ability to generate dialogue, plot structures, and scenes. (The jury’s out on whether this is really just sophisticated plagiarism.) Regardless, all this caused significant uproar among WGA-repped writers. The writers argued using their work without proper compensation or consent undermined their intellectual property rights and devalued their creative contributions. Put another way—it’s akin to laid off Disney tech workers having to train their foreign replacements before they were shown the door. Hollywood writers aren’t the only ones with a beef about this picture. Journalists from many newspapers collectively have sued OpenAI and Microsoft for infringing on their rights by allegedly training AI using human writing. So where do we go from here? To borrow a metaphor, the plot will invariably thicken. The WGA’s strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers underscored a collective demand for fair compensation and creative control in an era increasingly dominated by streaming services and rapid technological advancements. Meanwhile, AI’s emergence as a tool for screenwriting adds another layer of complexity to this convoluted landscape. While AI offers benefits for aspiring writers, especially by democratizing access to professional scriptwriting tools, it also raises serious concerns about intellectual property and the devaluation of creative labor. Moving forward, critical questions remain: Will AI enhance the storytelling process or undermine human creativity? Most importantly, what steps can be taken to ensure human creators are fairly recognized and compensated? Thinking through these questions little more than a year after ChatGPT’s momentous arrival I cannot help but remember a line from (carbon-based) screenwriter Donn Pearce. He penned Cool Hand Luke, a wonderfully written film that continues to stand the test of time: “What we have here is a failure to communicate.” Follow me on LinkedIn. Check out my website or some of my other work here. Michael Ashley Following Editorial Standards Print Reprints & Permissions
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