A DEEP DIVE FROM GEORGE MF WASHINGTON: And the Strike Dragged On…

The confusion over the WGA A.I. fight is best described by a question I got on Twitter… “is the WGA actually worried that they will be replaced by A.I.?”

The answer is… sort of.

And whether or not you agree depends on whether you think it’s a short-term problem or a long-term one.

In the short-term, I believe the answer is no, with a but.

There is some concern in the short-term that some of the writing steps that are currently done by humans, and which generate significant fees, could be taken over by A.I.

Imagine a long-running formulaic show like a police procedural that has been airing 22 episodes every season for ten years. It is possible that for a show like this, the Network might be able to put all of the previous episodes into an AI program and ask the system to generate new scripts featuring ripped from the front page crime stories. And then even if the scripts are bad, a room with just a couple of human writers in it could revise those scripts and get them into production shape without the need for a full-sized room of ten or more writers.

This is a long piece but, if you’re interested in the writers’ strike, you’ll come away with quite an education.