Comment by faeriechangling | Hacker News Reader

Comment by faeriechangling | Hacker News Reader

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faeriechangling

>The WGA proposed to regulate the use of artificial intelligence on union projects, saying that AI can’t write or rewrite literary material,

First, the literal wording of this is also means Grammarly and translation applications cannot be used.

Second, the enforcement of this is very unclear. What happens if a film is halfway through production, and then gasp it turns out a writer rewrote the screenplay using AI? You can't use AI as source material, so arguably any use of that script or any work based off that script is "using AI as source material". Does the production just have to be cancelled? There's a problem here not only with proving that a writer DID use an AI, but proving that they DIDN'T and thus a production doesn't need to be burned to the ground.

Third, how far do you take this? AI even before ChatGPT and LLM's is already broadly prevalent in writing, so what exactly establishes the pedigree of something as clean from the influence of vile AI?

>It’s very easy to imagine a situation in which a studio uses AI to generate ideas or drafts, claims those ideas are ‘source material,’ and hires a writer to polish it up for a lower rate.

It's even easier to imagine a studio will simply continue hiring writers and buying drafts from writers using AIs. How can you possibly prove an idea came from an AI and not a person in the first place?

>can’t be used as source material or to train AI.

How many studios are actually going to train their own AIs? What stops a studio or contractor from using an AI trained on such source material? Wouldn't it be more prudent to ban the use of AIs which were trained on WGA materials?

This entire proposal seems to be based on the populist sentiment about creatives being the victims of both studios and AIs, so obviously we need to stop the studios from using AIs by banning AI usage in film productions. The problem is that the writers are the users of AIs and they're the only ones who know and can prove they used an AI in practice.

I'm sure it's good politics because it leads to headlines like "GPT-4 Can’t Replace Striking TV Writers, but Studios Are Going to Try".

I think you misunderstand. As I understand it, the WGA is very open to _writers_ using AI to help them in their work. The risk that the WGA is protecting their members against here is specifically a situation where a _studio_ uses an AI system to screw a writer out of certain rights with regards to a movie.

There is a big difference in terms of pay and credits when a writer adapts source material (such as a book) compared to when they write a screenplay from scratch. The fear here is that the studio could circumvent the purpose of this difference by writing material using AI, and then hiring a writer to "adapt" this material as a screenplay. Or the studios could write a full AI-generated screenplay and hire a writer to "fix" it.

In my opinion this is a relevant worry, and if I was a writer I would be happy that the WGA took this stance.

More info here: https://variety.com/2023/biz/news/writers-guild-artificial-i... "Instead, the proposal would allow a writer to use ChatGPT to help write a script without having to share writing credit or divide residuals."

>As I understand it, the WGA is very open to _writers_ using AI to help them in their work

I can't actually find a direct quotation of them actually saying they're open to this. Whereas I can find a direct quote of them saying "AI can’t be used as source material, to create MBA-covered writing or rewrite MBA-covered work, and AI-generated text cannot be considered in determining writing credits."

I also fail to see how a random studio executive who writes up a draft using an AI and hands it off to a professional writer to cleanup, isn't themselves a writer.

It's also already possible to just hire some random person off the street, have them draft up a screenplay based on what an executive says, have them give up their copyright, and send it off to a writer for "Adaption". The only truly novel thing about AI is that it's cheaper and it's possible to produce creative works which are not copyrightable in the first place using AI, and if the contractual implications of this are the specific concern, the WGA should be far more narrow with their proclamations.

Also what they say on twitter:

"[AIs] output is not eligible for copyright protection, nor can an AI software program sign a certificate of authorship." Is literally wrong."

Is not literally true, it's possible to produce both uncopyrightable or copyrightable work with an AI: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/03/16/2023-05...

> It's also already possible to just hire some random person off the street, have them draft up a screenplay based on what an executive says, have them give up their copyright, and send it off to a writer for "Adaption".

I don't think this is true. Any studio that has signed on to the WGA collective bargaining agreement can only hire WGA members to write. I am sure studios would love to do that otherwise and pay the writer less. Here the WGA has identified a new potential way of this occurring and is protecting against it.

https://www.romanolaw.com/2022/11/11/what-to-know-when-hirin...

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).

It seems like a very sane middle ground.

I find their public statements to be vague and confusing

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