Writers Strike & AI

[Ihavewaffles]

Reception, review, and regard for film and television are the highest it has ever been since the late 1970s.

Lol wut? Fyi we didn't have the internet, or imdb, rotten tomatoes n there was no way to score stuff back then.

If this is the 'golden age' then why is streaming struggling, why are people not going to cinemas? We are in the dark ages now..writing has fallen off a cliff..

[Ivanstone]

Lol wut? Fyi we didn't have the internet, or imdb, rotten tomatoes n there was no way to score stuff back then.

If this is the 'golden age' then why is streaming struggling, why are people not going to cinemas? We are in the dark ages now..writing has fallen off a cliff..

It’s almost like there were things called newspapers and magazines that did these things for us. You think a show like MASH got the viewership it did from word of mouth?

Everything is over produced. There’s lots of terrific material being made right now but not there’s not enough of it to cover the dozens of different streamers out there. The dopes who run the streaming services thought they had unlimited money because everyone would continue to buy all the services regardless of how fractured things got.

Turns out most people are like me. I buy once service at a time (currently Apple, ending it soon). The only exception is Prime. My comic shop pays for my Prime account because it does other useful things besides giving me The Boys.

[Ihavewaffles]

...

you compare some newspaper to some website 40 years later?..there is no way to compare scoring through the years.

[Gumble]

Lol wut? Fyi we didn't have the internet, or imdb, rotten tomatoes n there was no way to score stuff back then.

If this is the 'golden age' then why is streaming struggling, why are people not going to cinemas? We are in the dark ages now..writing has fallen off a cliff..

IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes and other sites have been shown over and over to adjust their scores to fit what companies want from them, they are effectively paid advertising.

Streaming is struggling and people aren't going to cinemas because the product that most movie and TV producers are putting out is "mostly" horrible. (There are random exceptions that do very well)

Whether that is a problem with the writers, the direction they are given, or some other force that is driving people away from western media (or a combination....) that is hard to say.

People arguing that AI can't replace writers in Hollywood are both vastly overrating the abilities of writers in Hollywood and vastly underrating the ability of AI. It definitely CAN replace them, and most likely do a better job, but it will take some time to evolve into that and garner enough people that can direct and customise it to get to that point. Can any old person hop on ChatGPT and create a script that rivals Shawshank? Probably not. But can users and the AI get to that point relatively soon? Yes.

Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your view), AI will learn faster and smarter at a pace that will cause A LOT of waves throughout a ton of industries in the next few decades. Can AI replace a ton of professions that should definitely be worried about it? YEP. It isn't a question of if, but a question of when.



All of that being said, I do think writers should get paid more, especially if the product they make is successful. Big companies will happily take all the profits and leave nothing but crumbs for everyone else, but, that is where the danger lies. A strike like the one going on is only going to make those same companies invest in the people to push AI forward faster, so that they are no longer beholden to people that can strike on them. It is a crummy set of choices. Either you fight for your share of the pie now, and likely end up with no pie MUCH faster, or you try to ride out the crummy deal you have to keep your job in the long run.

I don't remember where the meme came from, but the "Learn to code" phrase pops into my mind. Writers in Hollywood that are any good may want to start looking into how to use AI to make themselves more marketable and steer into the direction the future is going.

[Ivanstone]

...

you compare some newspaper to some website 40 years later?..there is no way to compare scoring through the years.

And yet somehow people figured out what was good or bad back in the day. Some of us remember those pre-internet dark ages.

Hollywood isn’t that much different from back then. They needed repetitive entertainment to sell advertising. Whether it was good or not was mostly irrelevant.

Nowadays we can simultaneously make exceptional entertainment while also making lots of crap. We’re in the Golden Age of TV because when it’s great, it’s really great. You can and should just ignore the crap. There’s always been crap.

[Paperfox]

Technology never gives something without taking something away. One problem is that the benefits of the things lost may not show up right away, and you may not be directly affected.

If you think tv shows and/or movies suck now, wait to you see ones written by AI.

[Ihavewaffles]

Technology never gives something without taking something away. One problem is that the benefits of the things lost may not show up right away, and you may not be directly affected.

If you think tv shows and/or movies suck now, wait to you see ones written by AI.

I bet ai can write better star wars movies than the sequels..

[Ivanstone]

I bet ai can write better star wars movies than the sequels..

Better than Andor? I wonder how much money all of the writers made for that.

[Fencers]

Lol wut? Fyi we didn't have the internet, or imdb, rotten tomatoes n there was no way to score stuff back then.

People wrote and reviewed film and television since their inception. Have you never read a newspaper?

If this is the 'golden age' then why is streaming struggling, why are people not going to cinemas?

Inflation/costs. The majority of cinema going has only ever been in a handful of US markets historically.

All these key markets have experienced in the last 10 years, dramatically rising costs relative to other markets.

I used this example and posted screenshots In a recent thread here, but to take my family to see a movie at 5:30 in a premium auditorium is roughly $130 before parking or transportation cost. Or snacks.

I am not even in the most expensive of the top markets.

When I do focus groups polling for customer interest ratings; cost is the most cited factor by customers for avoiding theatrical releases.

Not once in 9 years has quality of product ever been mentioned on any customer polling.

Only new streaming services are struggling. The ones that had to rush production of original content or have ancillary overhead or legacy debt; Disney, Warner Bros, Paramount.

The overhead and legacy properties are nonexistant for Uni or Netflix, for example. Their issues are not strictly revenue, but customer cap and stagnant growth.

Meaning everyone who would get Netflix probably already has access to it at this point. Nstflix have to find a way to stratify their offerings without pricing out majority customer base- and they will likely have that in action within 2 years based on the PRLs that have been auctioned.

We are in the dark ages now..writing has fallen off a cliff..

It has not. All analytics report the highest customer satisfaction recorded historically in the business.

[Celarent]

As someone who (presently) makes a living writing, I find that generative AI's perceived value is directly tied to devaluing communication. In other words, an employer who believes "Pfft, it's just keywords strung together with phrases" will meet expectations so long as they're low.

I *may* get canned because my employers think prescriptive messages for a prescriptive word count serve their needs just fine. And it could be industry-wide, in many sectors, that we see this race to fill-in-the-blanks.

But all it takes is one competitor to consistently break monotony -- and if you don't find generative AI monotonous, look more closely -- to remind people that all technology, no matter how novel, gets folded down to size into the bigger picture.

[Ihavewaffles]

If the industry decides against ai, then they need better writers, n pay them better, otherwise there's no point...

- - - Updated - - -

Better than Andor? I wonder how much money all of the writers made for that.

Sequel trilogy, the movies

this crap

[Kaleredar]

If the industry decides against ai, then they need better writers, n pay them better, otherwise there's no point...

- - - Updated - - -



Sequel trilogy, the movies

this crap

On the contrary, Rise of Skywalker seems like exactly the kind of movie that would get spat out by an AI when you typed in "fan pleasing Force Awakens Sequel, -last jedi, +fanservice, +Palpatine." It checks every lowest-common denominator star Wars fanservice box, all assembled into a soulless, thoughtless product devoid of new and original ideas.



As for AI script writing... eh, fuck it. If the WGA says "no AI contributions to work" then that's the law of the land. The WGA is too powerful and has too many connections with other lynch pin production arms to have their resolutions effectively ignored by studios (the beauty of Unions!) I really don't care about "well think of all the practical, artistic uses for it!" or other sanctimonious preaching about the "fidelity" of AI work. It's fundamentally creatively bankrupt- all of it. And don't get me wrong, I don't care if someone uses it to write their DND campaign or make fan characters or whatever. That's fine. And that's where it should stay; an idle, faffing thing, used as a parlor trick. Hell, all these AI things should be free to boot. That's the only real way to ameliorate the fact that they're stealing work to train things to then sell.

But if you use it to write things, or produce things wholesale (album covers come to mind...) that you expect me to like and appreciate as part of a whole that was simply spat out by a computer? I find that... insulting. Like a bare measure above dangling keys in my face and jostling them around and calling it entertainment. Artistic intent and execution is everything. All AI art does is remove that.

And if you think markets are saturated with bullshit art and writing now, just wait until non-writers and non-artists start producing it in volume. Hell, just look at art station and the thoughtless drek AI art that's been spewed over it. The only thing moving faster than AI art development is how rapidly stale it's become.

...and that's removing the notion that all of these models steal and generally misappropriate things to form a profit model without a cent given to the people whose work was used to train it.

[Ihavewaffles]

the ai wouldn't throw in mcguffin's like that knife, or when they randomly fall through some crap n happen to find just what they need..
AI would follow a logical algorithm, only humans can be so stupid they write like, well; children...todays writers are an embarrasment...so shitty that ai becomes a consideration..

If we had quality writing, argument for ai would be a lot harder..

[Soulwind]

the ai wouldn't throw in mcguffin's like that knife, or when they randomly fall through some crap n happen to find just what they need..
AI would follow a logical algorithm, only humans can be so stupid they write like, well; children...todays writers are an embarrasment...so shitty that ai becomes a consideration..

If we had quality writing, argument for ai would be a lot harder..

Great, so you agree that hiring writers for the cheapest price, replacing them as often as possible and forcing them to change the entire script every other week because of some random metric is not good for the product and that even AI in its current early stages is a threat to writers working in such conditions.

[Orby]

the ai wouldn't throw in mcguffin's like that knife, or when they randomly fall through some crap n happen to find just what they need..
AI would follow a logical algorithm, only humans can be so stupid they write like, well; children...todays writers are an embarrasment...so shitty that ai becomes a consideration..

If we had quality writing, argument for ai would be a lot harder..

They most certainly would considering AI basically steals existing ideas to create its own narrative. Only instead of a knife you'll get a spoon or some shit, or it'll find someone's fan fiction and use that lol. AI cannot create original works, it can only manipulate and adapt. Its a collage of ideas and works warped together to produce something.

[loras]

They most certainly would considering AI basically steals existing ideas to create its own narrative. Only instead of a knife you'll get a spoon or some shit, or it'll find someone's fan fiction and use that lol. AI cannot create original works, it can only manipulate and adapt. Its a collage of ideas and works warped together to produce something.

This, people do not even have a passable concept of what "AI" currently is. It's just some worshippable meme to them, their expectations and understandings of it not exceeding some primitive's relation to fire.

It's a bit tiring.

[Orby]

This, people do not even have a passable concept of what "AI" currently is. It's just some worshippable meme to them, their expectations and understandings of it not exceeding some primitive's relation to fire.

It's a bit tiring.

I haven't even got around to all the copyright and legal issues of using A.I. :P

[loras]

I haven't even got around to all the copyright and legal issues of using A.I. :P

Let's not go there, between different legal systems and language barriers it would not be fruitful to do so at this stage. ^^'

Not that i don't want to talk about it, rather that this stuff needs time to develop.

[kranur]

The people pushing AI to replace Hollywood writers aren't writers, they're dumb AI nerds who think they're changing the world somehow. These are the same dumb nerds who thought NFTs were going to change the world.

Doubt they're even nerds, cause those might actually know what they're talking about. Just dumb idiots who think AI is actually correct and can do everything a human can.

[JDL49]

This is mostly about TV and the WGA has got to realise the 'Goose' that generated the big profits is GONE. No ads, no big profits. No big profits, much less to share unless you go after a pieces of the pie that you had no direct participation in creating. And it sounds like that is exactly what they're doing.

The other thing I am getting is the implication that they are trying to save jobs that simply no longer supportable due to a decline in demand for what the industry makes and the decline in revenues from the slow death of linear TV. There was a hell of a lot less risk back when we only had the big 3. Dem days are gone.