Writers picket during the Writers Guild of America strike in front of Netflix on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood California
The Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike began on Tuesday. Photograph: FREDERIC J. BROWN/Getty Images

AI, the WGA Strike, and What Luddites Got Right

English textile workers once destroyed the machines threatening to take their jobs. Screenwriters can’t kill AI, but they can protect themselves from it.

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Earlier this week, on the red (technically striped) carpet of the Met GalaThe Dropout star Amanda Seyfried answered a tough question: What did she think about the then-impending Writers Guild of America strike? Wearing an elegant Oscar de La Renta dress made with 80,000 gold and platinum bugle beads, she told a Variety reporter that everything she’d heard from writer friends indicated they would picket if they couldn’t reach an agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. Poised, draped in priceless garments and jewels, she remained firm. 

“I don’t get what the problem is,” she said. “Everything changed with streaming, and everybody needs to be compensated for their work. That’s fucking easy.” 

Seyfried’s friends were right. At midnight that night, while many Met Gala attendees were still at after-parties, the WGA declared that the strike, the first of its kind in 15 years, was on. “The decision was made following six weeks of negotiating with @Netflix, @Amazon, @Apple, @Disney, @wbd, @NBCUniversal, @Paramountplus, and @Sony under the umbrella of the AMPTP,” the organization tweeted late Monday. “Though our Negotiating Committee began this process intent on making a fair deal, the studios’ responses have been wholly insufficient given the existential crisis writers are facing.”

Throughout the week, explainers have delved into what that crisis entails. For one, the 11,500 TV and film writers in the union were seeking more writers per show, shorter exclusive contracts, and better minimum pay—all conditions the guild says have gotten worse in the streaming era. For another, the union wants guardrails for Hollywood studios’ use of AI. 

Specifically, the Writers Guild is asking that their contract include language stipulating that every credited writer be a human person, that screenplays, treatments, outlines, and other “literary material,” in industry parlance, can’t be written by ChatGPT or its ilk. Also, they’re asking that AI not be used to generate source material or be trained on work created by WGA members. AMPTP responded by saying they’d be willing to have “annual meetings to discuss advancements in technology.”

Call someone a Luddite these days and they’ll think you’re saying they’re afraid of technological change. Actual Luddites, though, were nothing of the sort. In the middle of the Industrial Revolution, amid an economic downturn and growing unemployment, British textile workers began demanding better wages. Their form of protest was destroying the machines that automated their jobs. Many workers at the time worried about being replaced by technology, but that doesn’t mean the Luddites were totally against it. “They just wanted machines that made high-quality goods,” Kevin Binfield, editor of Writings of the Ludditestold Smithsonian Magazine in 2011, “and they wanted these machines to be run by workers who had gone through an apprenticeship and got paid decent wages.”

Apply this thinking to modern concerns about AI taking jobs and it’s an argument for human creativity, for people who understand new technologies and can work with them. In their public statements, the WGA has said studios can point writers to AI-generated content for research, AI just can’t do the writing itself. It’s all about how the machines are utilized. 

People forget, often blinded by the glitz and glam, that Hollywood is a union town. Screenwriters, directors, crew members—they all participate in some kind of collective bargaining. Brad Pitt once, while serving as an extra in a film, tried to give himself a line in an attempt to get a Screen Actors Guild card. (He failed.) That means the WGA’s actions now might end up influencing the future of the labor movement. So many professionals—from journalists to artists to coders—are facing competition from machine learning systems, and with the eyes of the world on the WGA’s battle, its wins or losses could set precedents for other industries. 

Does all of this sound alarmist? Maybe, but remember: No one really knows how to handle AI’s potential—not college administratorsnot the US Copyright Officenot record labels. This week, the Biden-Harris administration announced an initiative to “promote responsible AI innovation.” 

Even AI’s greatest minds seem shaky on the subject. AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton made headlines this week when he quit Google and told The New York Times he feared the future: “It is hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things.” In March, a group of tech leaders published an open letter calling for a pause in AI development to examine the risks posed by “human-competitive intelligence.” The three humans it took to pen Terminator gave more dire warnings. 

These anxieties about the future were likely not that different from what the Luddites were experiencing. One may say—and there’s always someone who will—that progress will happen regardless and people should be willing to embrace the machines, that AI may replace some roles but it’ll create new jobs. As Silo creator and Wool writer Hugh Howey told WIRED this week, “Automation was going to take jobs, but so far it’s only changed jobs.” But just because writing can be done by a machine doesn’t mean it should, or that it will generate the best, most original story. Fast fashion has pushed mass-produced garments everywhere, but the costs, while cheap, are exorbitant.  

Ned Ludd, the Luddites’ namesake, probably never existed. He’s often referred to as “mythical,” a name and a story people rallied around. He symbolized smashing the system that wanted people to make things quickly without training or fair pay. This is why I’m still thinking about Seyfried four days later. What she said reverberated widely; her comments were shared all over news and social media, making her a champion of working people. It was eye-catching, perhaps even more so than her dress beaded by hand.