A confrontation broke out in Los Angeles this week as 11,500 writers for film and television went on strike. Screenwriters know all about confrontations: they are the second acts of three-act dramas, when the main characters face a crisis that only gets resolved at the end.
“You put them in the worst possible position they could ever possibly get into in their lives,” George Lucas, creator of the Star Wars films, once remarked of the second act. In this drama, writers have seen their pay erode in the streaming era, have lost the comfy conditions of broadcast television and fear their jobs will be taken by robots.
It is strange to find among a list of demands submitted to producers by the Writers Guild of America the call for only humans, not AI chatbots, to be allowed to “write or rewrite literary material”. Drawing attention to the fact that you think software could do some of your job is a bold gambit but screenwriters have vivid imaginations and reasons to be insecure.