Will AI replace writers? Thanks to the agreement reached between the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers this week, the answer is a huge NO.
According to

Variety, The WGA gained several solid concessions regarding the use of artificial intelligence, including:

• The option to use or not use AI to create content.
• Being told whether the materials they’ve been given are AI-generated or include AI-generated material.
• Prohibition of the use of writer-produced content to train AI systems.

A writer’s style is influenced by a variety of factors, including race, ethnicity, gender and life experiences—not to mention the hours of work they put into learning and practicing their craft. When combined, these parts of who they are help to create an authentic writing style that becomes their signature.

That’s why, for me, one of the biggest wins is that a writer’s existing work can’t be used to train an AI system. Why? Because this “training” allows AI systems to “learn” a writer’s style and replicate it infinitely with no credit or residual payment given to the human author.

This agreement sets a strong precedent for writers of all types and shows that we can protect the valuable work we do in the age of AI. The work writers do can’t be easily replaced by AI because, though beneficial in some ways, it lacks the human experience element that helps us make strong connections to what we read or watch in movies and television. I suspect that as AI use grows so will the labor actions by writers of all types who want to preserve the work that they do. My hope is the protections against AI received by WGA writers will spread to writers in other professions.

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