As someone who is very close with (and supportive of!) people in the WGA— this is not what they’re demanding.
They’re demanding that a studio cannot classify something AI-generated as “source material” in the same way a book, movie, play or another WGA script is. They want things generated by AI to be classified as “background material” (e.g. a Wikipedia article, newspaper clip, etc).
In a nutshell (but also, I’m not an expert), this gets down to how studios can pay or hire writers:
A studio CAN hire a writer at a day-rate (think, as a one-off gig rather than stable job) to “touch up”/“rewrite”/etc source material such as other scripts. This is usually at a lower rate than if you hire the writer in full capacity.
A studio already CANNOT hire a writer on a day-rate, give them a Wikipedia article, and claim that a writer making a story off of it is simply a “revision”. They must be hired in their full capacity, often with a writers room, to flesh it out.
The WGA’s demand is that ChatGPT and similarly generated content be placed into the second category.
A writer could still “use” ChatGPT themselves, and a studio could also provide writers with a ChatGPT-produced script, but the writers would need to be paid as if they were working “from scratch” (though, conceivably the studio still saves money in this context, as the room could be less weeks than otherwise).
They’re demanding that a studio cannot classify something AI-generated as “source material” in the same way a book, movie, play or another WGA script is. They want things generated by AI to be classified as “background material” (e.g. a Wikipedia article, newspaper clip, etc).
In a nutshell (but also, I’m not an expert), this gets down to how studios can pay or hire writers:
A studio CAN hire a writer at a day-rate (think, as a one-off gig rather than stable job) to “touch up”/“rewrite”/etc source material such as other scripts. This is usually at a lower rate than if you hire the writer in full capacity.
A studio already CANNOT hire a writer on a day-rate, give them a Wikipedia article, and claim that a writer making a story off of it is simply a “revision”. They must be hired in their full capacity, often with a writers room, to flesh it out.
The WGA’s demand is that ChatGPT and similarly generated content be placed into the second category.
A writer could still “use” ChatGPT themselves, and a studio could also provide writers with a ChatGPT-produced script, but the writers would need to be paid as if they were working “from scratch” (though, conceivably the studio still saves money in this context, as the room could be less weeks than otherwise).
It seems like a very sane middle ground.