The Writers Guild of America went on strike three years ago in large part out of fears of writers being replaced by artificial intelligence. That has not happened — whether due to copyright issues, or because AI doesn’t write well, or because of protections the WGA won in the strike.
But last fall, Disney allowed its characters to appear in user-generated Sora videos, showing that the issue is not going away. And as the guild prepares to sit down again with the studios next week, AI remains a top-of-mind concern.
John August, co-chair of the WGA Negotiating Committee, said Tuesday that the union will seek to affirm the principle that writers should be paid for derivative uses of their work, including AI training. In the last go-round, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers refused to accept any limitations on the use of scripts — which they own — to train AI models.
“There has to be some payment for training and AI outputs based on our work,” August said.
August sat for an interview along with Danielle Sanchez Witzel, the other negotiating co-chair; Michele Mulroney, the president of WGA West; and Ellen Stutzman, the guild’s chief negotiator.
The overall mood heading into the talks seems less militant than it was in 2023, when writers warned of existential threats to their livelihoods if their demands were not met. Now, far fewer writers are working, contributing to eight-figure deficits in the union health fund. The focus of negotiations is on patching up the fund while addressing some unfinished business from 2023.
For now, all the militancy has been supplied by the Writers Guild Staff Union, which is on strike and is picketing daily outside WGA West headquarters. The staff is demanding better wages and job protections, including — fittingly — protection against being replaced by AI.
If no deal is reached between now and Monday, the WGA staff could end up picketing outside AMPTP headquarters while WGA leadership is inside at the bargaining table.
We should just do the elephant in the room first, which is the staff union is on strike. Where does that stand? Obviously, it must be frustrating to have that going on. How do we resolve this so we can focus on the studios?
Stutzman: I’ll just say, first contracts can be tough. We bargained a fair contract with the staff union, and we bargained in good faith. Our members can see the offer we made and we reached out to the WGSU today to talk and see if there’s a path forward. But I’ll just say, we’re here to talk about the (Minimum Basic Agreement) and the very important writer negotiation. So I think I’ll just leave it at that, versus saying more.
Functionally, you are able to go ahead with those negotiations without the staff at full strength?
Stutzman: Yes.
In terms of the MBA negotiations, it feels like healthcare is the number one thing. The last time it was the number one thing was 2017 and that was resolved with a balance of increased contributions and cost reductions. I think it was $30 million of increased contributions and $7 million of cost reductions. Is that a fair way to think about what it might end up looking like this time?
Mulroney: We’ve been very open that this will be a headline issue, and that we will be asking the companies to increase their contributions and put a significant amount of money into our health fund. It’s too early to talk about potential plan changes, because we have to see what we get from the companies first, and then we’ll figure things out after that. But if it comes to health plan changes, we’re always going to prioritize affordability and member choice and make sure that we are sensitive in that way.
One thing I zeroed in on from the report that you put out was the extended coverage points, which is a system that has existed for 25 years. And basically you’re allowed to not work for a while and spend down your accrual of points and still get coverage. After a while, I’m sure that becomes expensive. So is that something you’re looking at in terms of a reform when you talk about plan changes?
Mulroney: Again, not sure yet, but I’ll just say that the big pullback in spending that the companies chose to make since so-called Peak TV has meant less going into our fund, because fewer writers are working. So yes, some writers have had to lean on points during this period. So that’s also been a factor that has stressed out the fund. So again, once we see what the companies are going to do and what contributions they’re going to make, then we’ll have that discussion internally at the Health Fund and with our members after the fact.
Stutzman: And I just wanted to add, the extended coverage program has been in effect since 2000 and it is a program that the companies agreed to as trustees. And it is really of great benefit to the industry that there is a health plan that works for a freelance industry of workers who the companies want to stay in this industry to come up with the next great hit and be available for work. And so the plan was designed with the idea that you can have periods of lack of work in your career, and you can earn points to help get you through that. And of course, in a contraction, you have sort of a crisis because of the pullback in spending. I think it’s just important to remember how critical a benefit this is and it’s something that the companies as management trustees of the fund designed together with the union.
Just on the face of it, the numbers are quite severe and worse than it was in 2017.
Stutzman: There is a need more for more money. Health care inflation is a thing. There’s more writers on the plan than at that time. So yes, we’re going to be looking for a larger amount of money from the companies than we were in 2017.
Mulroney: And there are things that they can do, like for example, in the contribution caps — some of those have been in place for 20 years, and they’ve refused to move on those. And that’s obviously deprived the fund of millions of dollars every year. Their contributions on residuals is really important, too. In TV, they’ve been contributing for many decades on residuals. But they don’t contribute anything to the fund on features residuals. And that really needs to change.
I wanted to move on to AI and bring and bring John into this. I know you were very early on this topic. The guild was early on this in terms of addressing it in 2023, but I think you were even earlier than that in terms of investing in this Sudowrite company. So I just wanted to get your overall sense from that starting point — How do you think AI has played out? It feels like it’s been kind of a disappointment in terms of it actually being useful to anything in screenwriting. But I’m curious what you make of it.
August: In 2023 we were the first union to seek and ultimately win fundamental protections for our work when it comes to AI, and those protections have held up really well. We don’t see the companies trying to use AI systems to replace us. And we have no counterfactual — we can’t know what they would be trying to do if we hadn’t put in place those protections. But we’re happy to see those protections have held up well, and so we were the right union at the right time to take on this fight. And I’m glad we were able to win those protections.
As far as you’re aware, does AI do something that writers find useful?
August: As we talk to our members, we don’t see our members using AI to do their work. As we have our required meetings with the studios where we ask them questions about how they are using AI, we don’t find them using AI in ways that are a direct threat to our employment. Where we do see the companies using AI is largely in the things that are visible to everybody, like tile recommendations on their streaming services. We see them using it in post-production and visual effects, but not the kind of work that writers are doing.
Disney had this deal with Sora that they announced last fall, and the union expressed some concern about that. Does any of that step on the WGA’s turf?
August: Obviously it’s the studios who own the copyrights on this material. If they make our scripts into a movie or TV show, they own it, and they can license it. And the principle of our MBA is that when the work that we’ve created is exploited by our employers to make other things — when they’ve derived other work from it — we get a share of that. And one of our goals in this negotiation is to make sure that if employers are using material that guild members wrote to create AI-generated outputs, they must compensate us for that.
On the copyright question, the studios and the guild, I think, are on the same page. They have gone after Google and other companies for training on their data. So it feels like you should be aligned to some degree on this.
August: In many ways, our interests are aligned. We both publicly and privately, have urged the studios to protect their copyrights on the work that we created, and if they are able to do so and to license and make money off it, we believe that that some of that money needs to come back to us, just as with any other reuse of our material.
In terms of being compensated for training, the pushback from the AI industry on that has been that it would be an administrative headache, and that any compensation would be pennies.
August: I’ll say that if the companies are able to license their material to an AI company to create AI outputs, they clearly know that that material is going in there, and therefore they can also figure out how much of that should be going back to the writers who created that material the same way they did with DVDs and with other things we’ve classically gotten payments on. There’s ways to figure this out.
I wanted to move on to free work. In 2023 you got the guaranteed second step — that’s for feature writers. That’s a big deal. Is the same problem cropping up in TV? And does it have the same sort of hurdles in resolving it, in that sometimes writers are open to doing additional drafts because they want to make it better, or they want to give it a better shot of actually being produced?
Mulroney: The unfortunate reality is that a lot of the worst free work practices in features have now migrated into television.
Sanchez-Witzel: It’s a major problem on the TV side, especially because development has no calendar anymore. So we need to protect writers working on pilots from being held exclusive and unable to find other work for long periods while these companies take their time making decisions.
August: On the feature side of this, so often the free work is coming not from the studio, per se, but from the producer. And that’s why one of our proposals in this negotiation is that producers need to be designated as agents of the company, so that if they are requesting additional material, that material is paid.
So in effect, if you turn the script into your producer, it’s as though you turned it into the studio and that is the end of the project.
Mulroney: Correct.
August: Absolutely. Delivery is delivery.
This has been an issue for 35 years at least. Do you have a feeling like the guaranteed second step has solved some of that in features?
Mulroney: Yes. For sure. I’ve gotten a lot of outreach from members since ’23 just saying how important that second step was for them in order to be able to avoid that free draft that they would inevitably be asked to do, and also just to give them a chance to collaborate with and impress their employer by showing more work. And you know, we’ll be looking to expand on the guaranteed second step provision in this negotiation, so it covers more writers.
On streaming residuals and specifically the bonus system. That was sort of — ‘Let’s get the structure, and then we’ll see how it goes.’ So how did it go? Did did you get the money that you expected to get?
Stutzman: It was a great outcome in 2023 to get the companies to factor in viewership in paying for some sort of measure of success for films and series made for streaming. And that was one of the holdouts at the end, and what took so long in the strike. Writers have always participated in the success of their work, and bringing the framework to streaming was so important. I think it’s been a very welcome addition for writers who’ve received the bonus and it’s grown year over year. But we’re going to come into this negotiation and look to improve it in different ways — increase the amount and increase the number of projects that would qualify for it.
The representation that the studios made at the time was, ‘We think about 25% of these shows will qualify for this.’ You have the data now. So did it?
Stutzman: I don’t know the percent off the top of my head, but it’s done well for writers, I will say, particularly on Netflix.
It does feel like we almost need two different negotiations, because it’s like Netflix and then everybody else — in terms of who’s doing well and who’s not doing so great.
Stutzman: I wouldn’t say that. But I would just say, they make a lot of streaming series and have a lot of viewers, and so they they’ve done well. But I wouldn’t say, across the platforms, it’s a tale of two starkly different industries.
Big picture, it feels like the thing that people most want to talk about is just that there’s not a lot of work, right? And there’s not really a negotiating proposal you can make about that. But it does feel like it influences the atmosphere around the negotiation. It influences how much money is in the health fund. But also, do you not have as much leverage as you would have in a year when it was going gangbusters?
Mulroney: Even with the contraction, all of the scripted entertainment in this business is written by our members. So that’s where our power lies. No matter what the number of shows or movies — we write them all. So that leverage is not diminished by the contraction numbers. And I think we’ve demonstrated over many, many cycles that we will fight when necessary. And we’re hoping the companies come to the table this time, willing to make a fair deal and realizing that’s in everyone’s best interest, especially in a time of contraction and transition to the industry, that stability would be great for everyone. But I think you know that we’re not a union that gives away our power.
Sanchez-Witzel: This negotiation is coming after the 2023 strike, where it took the companies 148 days to realize that they could negotiate a fair deal that addressed the very real needs and concerns of the writers who make this industry possible. So, we sincerely hope that the lesson learned from 2023 is to come to the table to bargain a fair deal from the beginning.
A spokesperson for the AMPTP issued a statement in response.
“The AMPTP looks forward to engaging in a constructive and collaborative bargaining process with the WGA. Through continued good-faith dialogue, we are confident we can reach balanced solutions that support talented writers while sustaining the long-term success and stability of our industry and its workforce.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
English (US) ·