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That's behind a paywall so I can't read the details but my surface level reaction is a giant yikes, the studios are going to absolutely gently caress them on that 100% no doubt.
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Sep 26, 2023 21:28
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Vegetable posted:Studios will be able to train their machine learning models on writers’ work. There might be more nuance in the details, but it looks like WGA at least partially buckled on their demand. not great. salary increases aren’t going to matter much when writers are obsoleting themselves
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Sep 26, 2023 21:46
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It'll be interesting to see if the membership accept it. Personally I'd be inclined to say no if I were a writer.
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Sep 26, 2023 21:50
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I’m sure the same info will be available soon on the trade rags. But here’s my copy paste of the relevant sections from that WSJ article: “Hollywood studios are expected to retain the right to train artificial-intelligence models based on writers’ work under the terms of a tentative labor agreement between the two sides, people familiar with the situation said. The writers would also walk away with an important win, a guarantee that they will receive credit and compensation for work they do on scripts, even if studios partially rely on AI tools, one of the people said. That provision had been in an earlier offer from the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the group representing studios, streamers and networks. […] AI bots, which provide sophisticated, humanlike responses to user questions, are “trained” on large amounts of data. Entertainment executives didn’t want to relinquish the right to train their own AI tools based on TV and movie scripts, since their understanding is that AI tech platforms already are training their own models on such materials, people familiar with the matter said. Entertainment companies are looking at the use of AI tools for everything from summarizing scripts to special-effects to promotional marketing, The Wall Street Journal reported.”
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Sep 26, 2023 21:52
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I think wait and see the whole package on AI before judging based on a completely-devoid-from-context snippet leaked to the WSJ. And really, the studios *own* the scripts. It's really hard to see the case against them being allowed to use AI tools to, say, analyse what works and what doesn't in the scripts they have. Writers have strong interests in not having AI replace them for writing and re-writing materials, and this might be a case of the contract saying "we agree to not use AI to write any material, but we're reserving the right to run AI analytics" or whatever. We don't know!
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Sep 26, 2023 21:54
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I hope there is something more concrete there otherwise all the strike did was give the writers a slightly nicer severance package for the next few years as AI eliminates the industry
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Sep 26, 2023 22:00
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Hoping for the best for the SAG strike on video games, of course, but the publishers feel more blood from a stone than the studio execs.
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Sep 26, 2023 22:02
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Feldegast42 posted:I hope there is something more concrete there otherwise all the strike did was give the writers a slightly nicer severance package for the next few years as AI eliminates the industry I like this clause, as it sets a precedent that permission is required, thus helping to gently caress with the other LLMs that don't get it.
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Sep 26, 2023 22:03
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Writers are going to want to use AI as a tool, because when well applied, it can be a very useful tool. It is not creative in any way and is certainly not 'intelligent.' I totally get that writers are wary of AI and they have good reason to be - not because writers are in any danger of being replaced by AI, but rather that studios will create an outline out of some AI tool, then ask writers to 'punch it up,' allowing studios to not give writers full credit for their work. That to me is the really big problem, and it's the problem that I'm reasonably confident that the contract will address. With regards to training AI on their work, I think it's a reasonable thing to give a little bit on as long as the former issue is dealt with. I know AI gets thrown out as a boogeyman and the messaging has been very negative on AI, mostly for good reasons. But giving this little bit (assuming that's all they are giving) doesn't seem like a bad trade to me. We'll see, I guess.
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Sep 26, 2023 22:09
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Am I misremembering or wasn't there a recent court decision saying that AI-generated writing and/or art can't be copyrighted?
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Sep 26, 2023 22:12
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IIRC they draw a distinction between something that has been fully generated by an AI and parts of a work that are human-generated. So you could generate a script, then have a writer take a second pass at it and copyright the derivative work.
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Sep 26, 2023 22:19
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ashpanash posted:Writers are going to want to use AI as a tool, because when well applied, it can be a very useful tool. It is not creative in any way and is certainly not 'intelligent.' Yeah I've been trying to think of things the studios could do with AI trained on their scripts and whatever proprietary data they have and having the ability to take a script and ask "how many days of filming will this take? what's the estimated budget range on this script? how many distinct locations are there?" seems like it should be unobjectionable for writers. flashy_mcflash posted:Am I misremembering or wasn't there a recent court decision saying that AI-generated writing and/or art can't be copyrighted? The raw output of an AI model isn't copyrightable, but as soon as you introduce any amount of human expression, that becomes copyrightable. That can be changes because of editing, a deliberate arrangement and juxtaposition, a whole bunch of stuff. There was a court case upholding the copyright office's guidance on this. Pinterest Mom posted:The Copyright Office's guidance document on this is fairly readable (and makes a lot of sense to me). Section III is the most relevant part.
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Sep 26, 2023 22:20
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Pinterest Mom posted:Yeah I've been trying to think of things the studios could do with AI trained on their scripts and whatever proprietary data they have and having the ability to take a script and ask "how many days of filming will this take? what's the estimated budget range on this script? how many distinct locations are there?" seems like it should be unobjectionable for writers. Should it? In what universe would such tools and analysis ever result in anything other than reduced budget and deadlines, the same crap they always want, with AI modeled after a century of them overworking underpaid people on too short of deadlines + whatever snake oil code techbro of the week wrote.
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Sep 26, 2023 22:31
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Not real until it's from the union itself of course, but if it's true I'm not surprised. The AI stuff always seemed like a sacrificial bargaining chip to make the case for the financial and room size stuff stronger. When I saw actual writers talk about the strike, they always discussed residuals and room size first and foremost. The AI bit always felt very ancillary to me, it's just Twitter poisoned bloggers who seemed to believe it was more central to the union demands than it really was.
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Sep 26, 2023 22:40
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The end result of AI is people being fired, and anyone who thinks otherwise is drinking the tech bro Kool Aid. It's not a matter of if, it's when.
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Sep 26, 2023 22:41
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Yeah, it's a shame they gave ground on AI, but maybe there's thought any real enforceable structure on AI will have to come from the government anyway.
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Sep 26, 2023 22:42
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I'm curious if they gave ground on AI learning from writers, but put in place stricter rules on not allowing AI written content to be used? I don't know if that's knowable yet, and even if so, that's probably a band-aid at best. And I'm just guessing here. Basically, I want to know more.
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Sep 26, 2023 22:49
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thrawn527 posted:I'm curious if they gave ground on AI learning from writers, but put in place stricter rules on not allowing AI written content to be used? I don't know if that's knowable yet, and even if so, that's probably a band-aid at best. And I'm just guessing here. What’s the point of making a training model for AI if it can’t be used though?
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Sep 26, 2023 23:10
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fart blood posted:What’s the point of making a training model for AI if it can’t be used though? It doesn't have to output the same kind of thing that you trained it on. They could use the AI to summarize scripts for lazy execs to read, they could use AI trained on scripts to fine-tune recommendations on streaming services, they could use AI tools to say "split this script and send relevant portions to each crewmember", whatever.
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Sep 26, 2023 23:17
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ONE YEAR LATER posted:The end result of AI is people being fired, and anyone who thinks otherwise is drinking the tech bro Kool Aid. It's not a matter of if, it's when. You could say that about all technology. The end result of replacing horses with cars is that a lot of horse trainers and horse poo poo cleaners lost their jobs. Some jobs opened up in terms of making the new horseless carriages and laying asphalt, among other things. The Trump chuds scream that shutting down a coal plant that spews pollution into the air means that coal plant workers get fired, and it's true. Intelligent switchboard technology meant that manual operators were ultimately unneeded. But then again someone has to learn the new tech and how to fix it, how to maintain it, etc. New tech makes old jobs obsolete. People get fired. New jobs arise in their wake. This isn't some new silicon valley thing, it's just the way things work.
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Sep 26, 2023 23:17
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Curious what this means for the actors. Actors buckling on AI is far less likely but I can see them approving AI scanning but only with written consent, but that’s a flawed compromise because studios will simply stop agreeing to hire actors that refuse to allow a scan.
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Sep 26, 2023 23:22
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I rather take a wait and see approach to this. It seems like a story to make the WGA look like they lost the strike because they didn't do enough to protect themselves from A.I. and Union busters will absolutely try and make it seem like they lost the strike like they did in 2007.
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Sep 26, 2023 23:23
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ashpanash posted:This isn't some new silicon valley thing, it's just the way things work. It's not really working out though. The dark bright side I can see here is that execs jobs seem like something AI could handle now with the added bonus of the AI can't get into all the same kind of gross abuses execs get up to. They also don't need executive level pay.
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Sep 26, 2023 23:31
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Khanstant posted:Should it? In what universe would such tools and analysis ever result in anything other than reduced budget and deadlines, the same crap they always want, with AI modeled after a century of them overworking underpaid people on too short of deadlines + whatever snake oil code techbro of the week wrote. Bolded the relevant point. I'm far from pro-AI but you said it yourself, they're gonna want to squeeze budget and deadlines with or without it. Having a shinier tool to point to instead of an Excel sheet isn't going to change that.
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Sep 26, 2023 23:55
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Khanstant posted:It's not really working out though. The dark bright side I can see here is that execs jobs seem like something AI could handle now with the added bonus of the AI can't get into all the same kind of gross abuses execs get up to. They also don't need executive level pay. Yeah but can you imagine the fire and fury if execs had their "work" used to train AIs. That level of business is about nothing but deceptive manipulation and exerting control. They know exactly what they want to do with other peoples real work so they will form diamond hard solidarity when those tools get directed towards culling their cushy jobs. You aren't wrong that from an actual financial business stand point using AI to "lessen the strain" of being a C-suite is a good idea, but it's good idea for the shareholders. It's all long games when tech like this is be developed. Right now the shareholders need the AI supplanting workers to be normalized before the upper leadership can be eliminated by the same tech.
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Sep 27, 2023 00:07
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E. Revenant posted:Yeah but can you imagine the fire and fury if execs had their "work" used to train AIs. That level of business is about nothing but deceptive manipulation and exerting control. They know exactly what they want to do with other peoples real work so they will form diamond hard solidarity when those tools get directed towards culling their cushy jobs. It's the same reason lawyer and politician jobs will be the last to be automated, if ever: when your entire job is making and interpreting the rules of society and commerce, it's trivial to use those rules to protect your own labor. That said, I can absolutely see AI tech starting to supplant paralegal and campaign staffer work before too long.
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Sep 27, 2023 00:12
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Even if the writers had a guarantee of no AI consumption of their material…how would they prove the studios were using it? Right now LLM’s spit out “hallucinations” when the source dataset is known. Good luck proving Bing chat didn’t at one point scrape your google docs folder.
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Sep 27, 2023 00:44
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Let's become major shareholders and sue the executive team for not replacing themselves with AI execubots knowing it would make the company more profitable than a massive layoff round of actual workers already being underpaid. When the executives rally to pass laws protecting themselves we swoop in with a rogue pro-human senator to change the wording to protect people instead. All we really need to pull this plan off is immense amounts of wealth.
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Sep 27, 2023 00:48
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ashpanash posted:You could say that about all technology. The end result of replacing horses with cars is that a lot of horse trainers and horse poo poo cleaners lost their jobs. Some jobs opened up in terms of making the new horseless carriages and laying asphalt, among other things. The Trump chuds scream that shutting down a coal plant that spews pollution into the air means that coal plant workers get fired, and it's true. Intelligent switchboard technology meant that manual operators were ultimately unneeded. But then again someone has to learn the new tech and how to fix it, how to maintain it, etc. We're not talking about technology that makes physically dangerous or repetitive jobs obsolete, though. We're talking about creative arts. A car replacing a horse isn't the same as a computer replacing a writer or actor, and to even try and equate the two is completely insane to me.
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Sep 27, 2023 00:53
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An AI cannot write a script on its own right now, though. If we're worrying about hypothetical future generations of AI tech, maybe then, but ChatGPT -- impressive as it is -- falls down pretty spectacularly as soon as you find one of its limits and press at it. (For example, it has absolutely no concept of truth, and will merrily lie about anything if it thinks you'll like the answer better that way.)
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Sep 27, 2023 01:05
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Yes, I am not talking about tomorrow, I'm talking about 5, 10, 20 years from now. Actually, maybe it's for the best. I watch too much TV anyway.
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Sep 27, 2023 01:09
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CapnAndy posted:For example, it has absolutely no concept of truth, and will merrily lie about anything Wow, no wonder execs are so enamored with it! 
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Sep 27, 2023 01:10
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https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/writers-guild-strike-end-1235600992/thr posted:A historic Hollywood labor battle will soon be over.
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Sep 27, 2023 01:11
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ONE YEAR LATER posted:We're not talking about technology that makes physically dangerous or repetitive jobs obsolete, though. We're talking about creative arts. A car replacing a horse isn't the same as a computer replacing a writer or actor, and to even try and equate the two is completely insane to me. The palm pilot started the end of the rolodex and the end of a lot of secretarial jobs. (Not all of them, of course, but a lot of them.) CAD software killed off the jobs (or at least change them significantly) of some industrial artists. A modern CMS does the job that it used to take a whole dedicated team to do when putting together a newspaper. Why do I need an entire photography lab and staff when I have aftereffects? Those are just off the top of my head. I'm not saying it doesn't suck for those who get replaced. Of course it does. I wish we had a reasonable social net so those who lose their jobs can get back on their feet without going through in some cases abject poverty and debt. It's terrible what people have to go through when they lose their jobs. But that, in and of itself, is not a reason to stop innovating. Which, to be clear, I recognize that is not what you said - you said the end result of tech is people getting fired. And you're right. And that sucks. But we should also recognize that it also does amazing things for people and opens up new jobs, new opportunities, new creative options, and sometimes entirely new ways of doing things - in some cases, much better ways. It isn't all doom and gloom, and accepting a bit of AI here and there isn't going to destroy the entire industry. In my view, do it slowly and carefully and put big guard rails on it - that is probably a lot better than just being tech-bro laissez-faire and letting whatever happens happen, while hopefully giving us more benefits with less pain. It's not a certainty, but it's worth trying in the face of the inevitability of it all.
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Sep 27, 2023 01:15
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do you people workshop your talking points in a discord or something, all of you sound the loving same
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Sep 27, 2023 01:21
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Summary of the agreements is now out, and the guild leadership have voted to end the strike as of midnight tonight PDT. https://www.wgacontract2023.org/the...member-meetings Someone actually in the industry will have to explain if they're satisfied with this, though.
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Sep 27, 2023 01:23
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Oxxidation posted:do you people workshop your talking points in a discord or something, all of you sound the loving same Sorry for trying to have a conversation.
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Sep 27, 2023 01:24
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Also, somewhat moot, because the WGA's larger summary seems to say that AI can't be used to write or rewrite by the studios. Writers can use AI tools to help them writer stuff but can't be required to, and if a studio has used AI to generate any material given to a writer, they have to disclose it. The residuals thing sounds pretty decent too, to my non-industry eye. I do wince at the whole '$30M budget movie for streaming' bit though, because that just screams that we see a lot of $25M-$29M budget films suddenly happen. Gaz-L fucked around with this message at 01:28 on Sep 27, 2023 |
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Sep 27, 2023 01:26
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Gaz-L posted:I do wince at the whole '$30M budget movie for streaming' bit though, because that just screams that we see a lot of $25M-$29M budget films suddenly happen. This... seems like a good thing? Haven't we all been yelling for more mid-budget films for years?
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Sep 27, 2023 01:29
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feedmyleg posted:This... seems like a good thing? Haven't we all been yelling for more mid-budget films for years? Yes, but my fear is the streamers would be doing it not to fill a gap in the market, but to avoid having to pay the improved terms.
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Sep 27, 2023 01:31
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