Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

CTOnews.com, May 3 (Xinhua) artificial Intelligence (AI) is more and more widely used in Hollywood. It can not only modify the appearance, language and actions of actors, but also draw animated short films and even try to write screenplays for movies and TV dramas. This makes Hollywood writers feel an unprecedented threat, they worry that AI will infringe on their creativity and copyright, and even replace their work. To protect their own interests, they launched a strike on Monday, demanding restrictions on the use of AI in the screenwriting field.

On Tuesday, 15 years of labor peace in Hollywood was broken as a large number of writers entered strike mode. This is a game between the Hollywood Film and Television Writers Union (WGA) and the American Film and Television production Alliance (AMPTP). WGA represents about 15000 screenwriters, while AMPTP is the organization that negotiates contracts for Hollywood studios. The two sides disagree on a number of issues, one of which is the role of AI.

WGA puts forward two requirements about AI: one is that studios are not allowed to use AI-generated materials as "literary materials" or "source materials", which means that if a studio asks a screenwriter to modify a screenplay generated by AI, the screenwriter cannot be paid a lower rewriting or retouching fee; second, studios are not allowed to use existing scripts to train AI, which may lead to intellectual property theft. WGA said some members called AI a "plagiarism machine" and said the company should exclude AI from film and television creation and not try to replace screenwriters.

AMPTP rejected WGA's request, saying they were willing to discuss new technologies once a year, but did not specify. An AMPTP spokesman could not be reached for comment. Studios are facing the challenge of increasing revenue and coping with declining advertising revenue in the era of streaming, and they may want to use AI to reduce costs and improve efficiency.

Screenwriter John Auguste, a member of the WGA negotiating committee, said the writers had two concerns about AI: "We don't want our materials to fatten them, and we don't want to fix their messy first drafts." He said, for example, that you can imagine a studio training an AI with all the scripts from Nora Ephron (the screenwriter of romantic comedies such as "when Harry meets Sally" and "CTOnews.com") and ask it to write a comedy in her style. WGA's proposal is designed to prevent this from happening.

Screenwriter Warren Wright, a former creator and executive producer of the NBC series Law and order: special victims, says AI may produce some chaotic work. "the studio may not hire you to write the first draft, but will hire you to write the second draft, so you will be paid less, and the situation will be stifled in the cradle."

The debate over AI is one of several reasons for the Hollywood writers' strike, many of which are related to how to increase the pay of writers in the era of streaming, and the immediate cause of the strike is the failure of the two sides to agree on the average annual income of writers. The salary proposed by WGA is about $429 million per year, while the salary proposed by AMPTP is only about $86 million per year.

Ellen Stutzman, WGA's chief negotiator, said: "We have put forward a reasonable proposal that the company should exclude AI from film and television production and not try to replace the screenwriter."

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