HowWIRED will use Artificial Intelligence

Using Generative Artificial Intelligence Tools to Generate Short Story Ideas for Editors and Publishers of Newspapers, News Articles, and Social Media

Journalists have been testing out generative artificial intelligence tools to see if they can help us do our jobs better. AI software can’t call sources and wheedle information out of them, but it can produce half-decent transcripts of those calls, and new generative AI tools can condense hundreds of pages of those transcripts into a summary.

We may try using AI to generate story ideas. Suggestions like “Suggest stories about the impact of genetic testing on privacy” or “Provide a list of cities where predictive policing has been controversial” are some of the suggestions that an artificial intelligence might be able to give. This may save some time and we will keep exploring how this can be useful. But some limited testing we’ve done has shown that it can also produce false leads or boring ideas. Only humans can do the real work of evaluating which ones are worth pursuing. Where possible, for any AI tool we use, we will acknowledge the sources it used to generate information.

This is WIRED, so we want to be on the front lines of new technology, but also to be ethical and appropriately circumspect. Here are some ground rules on how we are using the tools at hand. We recognize that AI will develop and so may modify our perspective over time, and we’ll acknowledge any changes in this post. We welcome feedback in the comments.

While we’ve already seen the adoption of AI tools go hand in hand with layoffs for writers in other industries, the Writers Guild of America is reportedly ready to embrace the disruptive technology so long as it doesn’t directly impact how creators are credited and paid.

We might try to suggest headlines or text for short posts on social media. An editor has to approve the final choices for accuracy, as we are currently generating lots of suggestions manually. Using an AI tool to speed up idea generation won’t change this process substantively.

Writers Guild of America Negotiations: Implications for the Television and Film Industry in the Rise of the Stream Era: The Case of Warner Bros.

The Writers Guild of America commenced high-stakes negotiations with studios on Monday over a contract set to expire on May 1 — which could lead to the first strike in nearly 15 years, a prospect that would cause massive disruption to television and film projects across the industry.

The Sherman Oaks bargaining table is where the guild is going to seek higher compensation for writers, a boost in contributions to pension and health funds, and better workplace standards.

Most notably, the guild wants to factor in the streaming economy into compensation packages for its members. Residual fees are paid when a film or series is rerun or aired on broadcast. But those fees are vanishing in the streaming era, which is where a great deal of projects ultimately land these days.

The article was first published in theReliable Sources newsletter. Sign up for the daily digest chronicling the evolving media landscape here.

Additionally, with the rise of streaming, there are often fewer episodes in a show’s season than before. Shows that run on broadcast networks typically include more than 20 episodes in a season. That isn’t the case with shows ordered by other companies.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/20/media/wga-hollywood-reliable-sources/index.html

The Association of Motion Picture Producers (AMPTP) – Status and Prospects for Non-competitive Workplace Assignments in Hollywood

It’s a good time to be a cab driver because you can see a bunch of guys on the road, according to an entertainment lawyer. “Being a working writer is much harder than it used to be. The level of compensation, the treatment and expectations are all fundamentally different than they were.”

And with the artificial intelligence revolution being set into motion, the guild is also asking for studios to establish standards around the use of the technology. It wants the use of A.I. regulated, in terms of material created for the studios.

Of course, it’s unclear what precisely the powers that be in Hollywood will agree to and there are a number of hurdles the WGA will have to overcome to deliver its objectives to members.

The guild has advised members that the initial round of talks will last two weeks. At that point, there will be a break, during which it plans to update its members on progress. Negotiations would then resume with the aim of striking an agreement before May 1. The guild did not reply to a request for further comment on Monday.

For its part, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, a trade organization that represents the Hollywood studios, said it is approaching the negotiations “with the long-term health and stability of the industry as our priority.”

“We are all partners in charting the future of our business together and fully committed to reaching a mutually beneficial deal with each of our bargaining partners,” the AMPTP said in a statement. “The goal is to keep production active so that all of us can continue working and continue to deliver to consumers the best entertainment product available in the world.”

The WGA Proposal: Predicting the Nature of AI-generated Proto-Scripts for Screenplays and Scripts

According to Variety, literary material is what writers come up with on their own, like original screenplays, and source material is what pre-existing work is adapted for a separate project. By ruling out any content generated by an AI tool like ChatGPT as being literary material or source material, the proposal would effectively make it possible for writers to “draft” stories using ChatGPT prompts, fashion those stories into scripts, and then claim sole writing credits for the entire endeavor. Were a studio to get into the business of cranking out AI-generated proto-scripts and then passing those to human creators to punch up, those people could still be considered the project’s original writers. The proposal of the guild did not consider the possibility of scripts written completely by an artificial intelligence.

Of course, a proposal is just a proposal, the AMPTP hasn’t committed to anything just yet, and it’s always important to consider where these sorts of leaks might be coming from.

The idea of normalising content from the same technology used in those tools is something that some creative circles have concerns about. It is not hard to imagine a case of plagiarism and original authorship due to this kind of technology creating things based on other things it has already seen before. Some might argue that last point can also be said of the human creative process, and it is to a certain extent. But it feels more than fair to say that the WGA’s wading into uncharted territory here that, from a distance, seems like it could get very thorny.