6 ms·
Studios don’t want to replace writers. They just want to pay writers less by crediting AI if used. The writers want full credit so they receive full revenue.
by junofan 3y ago
Studios don’t want to replace writers. They just want to pay writers less by crediting AI if used. The writers want full credit so they receive full revenue.
- anonymousab 3y ago> Studios don’t want to replace writers They will do it the very first second they think that they can get away with it without major consequences (such as profit loss from bad AI writing).
- User23 3y agoDisney evidently doesn’t care about profit loss from bad human writing so it’s not clear that they'll care about same from bad AI writing.
- slg 3y agoI'm not sure if this is a comment written out of naivety of the profit focused nature of studios or ignorance of the writing process. Replacing writers and paying writers less is effectively the same thing. That "full credit" that you mention isn't just about what those writers got paid, it tells you what work they did. For example, a writer will often write a treatment of a movie which is effectively a short summary of a movie that is done before writing a script. Sometimes different writers will do the treatment and screenplay. This is generally the distinction you might see in "Story By" and "Written By" credits in movies (although these distinctions can and often are a lot more complicated). One likely goal of the studios is for an AI to write the treatment and then hand that off to a writer to turn it into a screenplay. That is one of the most practical ways AI can be used since treatments aren't an end product themselves and the AI's flaws can be corrected by humans when translating the treatment into a script. However, that is still effectively replacing writers by taking away one of their clearly defined jobs and in turn one of their paychecks.
- chii 3y agoIf the AI does a better job writing said treatments (aka, does the same or more for less cost), why shouldn't it take away the job?
- slg 3y agoThis question is irrelevant in the context of negotiating a collective bargaining agreement. The WGA's motivations are obvious. They are protecting the livelihoods of their members. If a studio thinks AI can genuinely do a better job than human writers, that studio has the right to replace those human writers with AI. The human writers likewise have the right to refuse to work with any studio that does so. The fact that no studio has even hinted at taking this route during a 5-month-long strike suggests that no one believes AI would actually do a better job than WGA members.
- willcipriano 3y agoNo way AI could write another remake of a movie from the 80's.
- krapp 3y agoThe list of things AI could never do, that it has already done, is getting rather long for a statement like that to read as anything but naive. Eventually, given enough investment, yes it could.
- shrubhub 3y agoWoosh!
- mrguyorama 3y agoAnd yet, the studios came to the bargaining table instead of doing just that. Sounds like they don't have that much confidence in such a plan.
- 3y ago
- DarkNova6 3y agoDisney has already announced to invest a billion into AI.
- bugglebeetle 3y ago…in their continued pursuit of driving their stock price down as far as it will go. If there was ever a company that needs to take that money invest it back into the kind of artists and work that made them such a powerhouse in the first place, it’s Disney. But, instead, they’ll pay out this money to some execs friend with a BS AI startup to procedurally generate another shitty Marvel or Star Wars thing.
- drumhead 3y agoThe plan eventually is to have AI churn out scripts, with a human script editor making whatever re-writes or changes are necessary to improve them.