TCTTS said:

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AI-created products simply can't recreate the most fundamental aspect of art. https://t.co/Rc3zbbvUta

— /Film (@slashfilm) May 2, 2023

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We are less than 5 years away from someone literally entering an entire book as a prompt in a language model and having it pump out a feature length movie that is fully voice acted with sound effects and music. If you don't think this won't destroy an entire industry then you're delusional.

This isn't going to be disruptive, it's going to eliminate entire sectors of the economy.

In 2 years we have gone from really poor pictures to actual video with voice acting. Yeah there are issues with hands, faces, and such but these will be fixed.

Getting an individually tailored movie to what you want will trump anything Hollywood could ever make.

Nanomachines son said:

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TCTTS said:

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This is why we’re striking. The studios are trying to turn writing into a gig job. Eliminating the writers room, forcing screenwriters to work for free, paying late night writers a “day rate.” If we don’t fight back, writing will cease to exist as a livable career. https://t.co/CLxweCbR68

— Adam Conover (@adamconover) May 2, 2023

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Writing, like graphics design and art, is dead. Language models will crush it completely. Sure they aren't going to be Shakespeare but no one in Hollywood is writing to that level. Hell most of the stories nowadays could easily be written by a language model AI.

Unfortunately for the writers, they struck at the worst time and it will be pretty trivial for companies to replace them with AI written stories.

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Every time I see a post like this it does nothing but tell me exactly how little the poster knows about what screenwriters actually do. They don't just write a script, put it on a conveyor belt to be filmed, and then wipe their hands of it. Writers are constantly rewriting on set. Writers are constantly working with actors. Writers are constantly "rewriting" even in the editing room. Writers are solving myriad issues throughout production that literally no one else - except sometimes the director - is capable of fixing. A.I. simply isn't going to be able to do those types of tasks, at the level that humans can. I have no doubt that studios will have A.I. writing scripts within the next couple of years (or will at least attempt to), but human beings will *always* have to rewrite/polish the A.I.'s work, and be the ones attending to the needs of the script throughout production. That, and the best scripts are far more complex and nuanced than most people realize, with a level of understanding of the human condition that I'll be surprised to see A.I. ever replicate. No A.I. will ever give us There Will Be Blood. No A.I. will ever give us Lost In Translation. Hell, no A.I. will ever give us Step Brothers. Instead, it'll be formulaic bullsh*t - perhaps with a few gems here and there - that again, humans will ultimately have to usher across the finish line.

Nanomachines son said:

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Brian Earl Spilner said:

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Strangest thing to me about all this is studios wanting to keep streaming data secret.

I'm guessing the numbers are big enough that it would make the pay disparity even more ridiculous between cable tv and streaming.

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It's obvious why, they don't want it known how poorly some shows do when those promote politically charged issues.

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And this what's *really* at the root of most of these posts - seeing A.I. as comeuppance for writers they want to see punished for being too "political" or "woke" or whatever other nonsense.

Having seen the "movies" you mention, you have awful taste if you think those are good. Also, you're outing yourself as a loser if you want an entire film tailored to you. They exist to be talked about, and clearly nobody cares about your interests.

It must really suck to be such a misanthrope rooting for entire industries to dissolve and for chaos to inevitably come about.

Take one look at his posting history - and the board he spends the most time on - and his motivations/mindset become crystal clear.

You have no business talking about writing since you've clearly never written anything objectively good, or even close to good. Hell, you don't even know what art is!

Two perfect examples. No A.I. will EVER be able to give us Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. That I am sure of.

TCTTS said:

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Great thread with some nice perspective…

An under-rated part of our current media company dynamic, that's led to this strike, is how miserable the execs *within* these companies are. They hate this new system as much as we do.

— John Rogers (@jonrog1) May 2, 2023

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This is one thing I have noticed in my own industry, oil and gas. The executives are 100% hamstrung by global finance to the point where they aren't really allowed to make any decisions on their own without Blackrock or vangaurd or some other global mega financial corporation. Everything is now about quarterlies and some farcical DEI metrics. Absolutely nothing else matters and the financial corporations hold everyone hostage.

It's ruined every industry it has touched. These people do not care at all about any of these companies, no matter the industry. What they care about is power and social control.

TCTTS said:

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Nanomachines son said:

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Brian Earl Spilner said:

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Strangest thing to me about all this is studios wanting to keep streaming data secret.

I'm guessing the numbers are big enough that it would make the pay disparity even more ridiculous between cable tv and streaming.

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It's obvious why, they don't want it known how poorly some shows do when those promote politically charged issues.

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And this what's *really* at the root of most of these posts - seeing A.I. as comeuppance for writers they want to see punished for being too "political" or "woke" or whatever other nonsense.

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I'm not celebrating it, AI will crush engineering too. I'm just telling you how it is. I'll probably be out of a job in 10 years and frankly I have no idea what I'll do.

Just because I don't like what it will mean for me doesn't mean I will ignore it or stick my head in the sand. What's coming is the single biggest change to humanity since the invention of agriculture. Everything will change and the global disruption and unrest will be huge.

Again... I literally just explained how closely I follow AI. And I already do follow a ton of AI accounts on Twitter. I see *exactly* what advancements are being made, on a daily basis. But as someone who knows screenwriting, and the movie industry, intimately, I've yet to see anything that shows me that A.I. will ever be able to give us what Paul Thomas Anderson, Tarantino, the Coen Brothers, and the like are capable of doing, never mind being able to work with actors on set - human to human - or make an intuitive call in the editing room. Sure, AI will be able to deliver some sh*tty, formulaic blockbusters, I have no doubt. But it won't be able to replicate much of the nuance, and many of the tasks, human beings are responsible for throughout production.

Also, you keep alluding to prompts. Well, prompts are given by human beings. Therefor, human beings will always be involved in the process. If anything, to oversee the process and interject when necessary. Just like I've been saying. Only I know that those "interjections" will be more frequent and more crucial than you realize.

For every doomsday sayer such as yourself, there are also perspectives that paint a picture of the future in the complete opposite direction...

https://thegrandredesign.substack.com/p/apotheosis

I'm not at all saying the above take will end up coming to fruition, I'm simply making the point that no one has any idea where any of this is heading.

All I know is that, like Capybara said earlier, I'm always dubious of people such as yourself, who speak so definitively on a topic, just as you're doing now, so early in its infancy.

Hell, because I *do* follow AI so closely, I can already see the sheen coming off so many of the over-the-moon proclamations made just a few weeks ago. That fever pitch from March-ish has already come down to earth a bit, with realizations that some of the tech isn't quite as far along as everyone suspected, and is going to require a lot more work than expected, to meet those earlier expectations.

TCTTS said:

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Again... I literally just explained how closely I follow AI. And I already do follow a ton of AI accounts on Twitter. I see *exactly* what advancements are being made, on a daily basis. But as someone who knows screenwriting, and the movie industry, intimately, I've yet to see anything that shows me that A.I. will ever be able to give us what Paul Thomas Anderson, Tarantino, the Coen Brothers, and the like are capable of doing, never mind being able to work with actors on set - human to human - or make an intuitive call in the editing room. Sure, AI will be able to deliver some sh*tty, formulaic blockbusters, I have no doubt. But it won't be able to replicate much of the nuance, and many of the tasks, human beings are responsible for throughout production.

Also, you keep alluding to prompts. Well, prompts are given by human beings. Therefor, human beings will always be involved in the process. If anything, to oversee the process and interject when necessary. Just like I've been saying. Only I know that those "interjections" will be more frequent and more crucial than you realize.

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Not that I disagree with you, but to play Devil's advocate, what makes you think the general public cares about that as much as you do? The three writers/directors you gave as examples aren't known for smashing the box office. I don't think Paul Thomas Anderson has ever had a movie clear $100 million. I totally understand their value to you as a lover of film, but why should a studio be worried that their ScriptBot can't churn out a script of that level of sophistication when what they would probably rather have is Fast & Furious 11?

Great writing produces great art, but from a business perspective it seems like the minimum required competency level is probably closer within reach than the WGA would like to admit.

Can we at least agree that the Hallmark Channel is already taken over by AI writing.

AI text generation being entirely dependent on pre-existing knowledge is lost on so many people.

Red Five said:

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They certainly can and I hope they would. But within the context of the writer's strike, now you are talking about only the top level of writers being irreplaceable. The people writing for Jimmy Fallon are by no means auteurs. Nanomachine's point was that writers should be more concerned about it than they appear to be.

I hope that you are right and AI doesn't become a big player in entertainment or any industry really.

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You haven't been reading my posts if you think my point is that only top level writers are irreplaceable. Again, what I'm simply trying to say is that human beings will *always* be involved in the writing process.

Think of it a bit like Phil Tippett and Jurassic Park. Originally, Spielberg was going to do the dinosaurs with stop motion, and had stop motion expert Phil Tippett go pretty far down that road, to the point where multiple test scenes had already been shot with a stop motion t-rex and stop motion velociraptors. Then, at the last minute, a test was done on a computer, almost on a whim... and the rest is history. But here's the thing... Tippett wasn't out of a job (even though he famously declared that he was now "extinct" - a line Spielberg loved so much he put in the movie). Because Tippett knew from his stop motion work, better than anyone, how dinosaurs moved, he ended up overseeing all of the computer animations, and found a new career path. Doing something very similar... but also different.

Roughly the same thing will happen in screenwriting, in that the A.I. will need massaging, from storytelling experts, both in the writing process itself, and again, throughout production. Will that ultimately result in fewer tried-and-true writer jobs? Probably so. But I don't think there's anything the WGA can do in these negotiations to force the studios from going down that path. It's inevitable. New jobs *will* be created in the process, though, and writers *will* still help tell these stories, and help tell jokes on late night, etc.

Basically, I see AI as less of a replacement and more of tool, or co-author at best. The Tarantinos of the world may likely never utilize it, while the studios will, but either way, writers will be involved in the process, from top to bottom, some more than others.