In late September 2023, the WGA’s 148-day strike came to an end with an accord that writers’ advocates hailed as a major win. The studios had agreed to certain safeguards regarding AI, such as not requiring writers to utilize generative AI tools, not allowing AI-generated content to be submitted as a writing credit, and not lowering writer compensation for work that included AI support. The authors who had been fighting for those provisions for five months had good cause to believe they had made progress as they walked the picket lines outside the studio gates on Melrose Avenue and at Rockefeller Plaza. They had, too. The question of whether what they accomplished is keeping up with what is actually being created has become more urgent with each passing month.
The 2023 Minimum Basic Agreement’s AI clauses sufficiently addressed the most glaring potential abuses. A writer cannot be given a ChatGPT-generated draft by a studio and told to fix it at a lower rate. A machine-written script is not eligible for WGA credit. These are important safeguards. The pact was unable to stop the advancement of the underlying technology, something that no union agreement could possibly do. The current model differs from the one that was in place at the beginning of the strike. In ways that confuse the clear categories the agreement was based on, the difference between a human first draft and an AI first draft, which was really wide in early 2023, has been closing.
The industry’s real concern isn’t that studios would use AI to replace seasoned writers; this is evident, enforceable, and covered by the contract. The anxiousness is more subtle and more difficult to control. It’s the stage where ideas are created, concepts are tested, tales are sculpted, and no one is formally employed yet. This is the development process, which occurs before a writer is officially tied to anything. About 40% of Hollywood production executives surveyed in 2024 reported using AI tools in this early stage, mostly for pitch material, coverage, and concept generation. That doesn’t violate the MBA. It’s the gap between what the technology can achieve and what the contract covers.
The economic pressure is particularly noticeable in the tiny room. The trend toward smaller writers rooms was already widely known prior to the strike; streaming services, in particular, had shifted to limited-episode seasons with fewer staff writers, squeezing the middle rungs of the career ladder that had previously allowed junior writers to hone their craft while making a living. To alter the economic structure, an AI that can produce coverage of source material at scale or develop a workable draft of episode themes does not need to take the position of individual writers. All it needs to do is make it a little bit simpler to defend the smaller space, the shorter hire, and the fewer contract weeks.
Beneath all of this, the copyright issue remains genuinely unresolved in significant ways. According to the US Copyright Office’s present stance, work created solely by AI cannot be protected by copyright; nevertheless, a person with adequate creative input is still entitled to the rights to work created using AI as a tool, however it is unclear where “sufficient creative input” ends and begins. For studios assessing AI-assisted scripts, this ambiguity presents an intriguing scenario: the ownership picture surrounding content with substantial AI input is less clear than it would be for entirely human-authored work. The WGA and others have called for regulatory action in response to the numerous lawsuits filed in 2023 and 2024 alleging that the AI systems performing this generation were trained on copyrighted screenplays without authorization. The legal proceedings are still in progress.
The current discussion is noteworthy because it has shifted from whether or if AI will impact screenwriting to how soon and in what particular ways. There was clarity in the previous discussion, which was held loudly during the strike and in the media coverage that followed. The union was negotiating protections, writers were opposing the threat. It’s a messier debate now. The applications are more varied, the tools are more powerful, and it is more difficult to pinpoint the precise locations where AI support blends into AI substitution. Observing writers’ rooms deal with this, it is evident that the fear is genuine and not unreasonable. Simply put, marching while carrying a sign is more difficult.
