according to Reuters, among the issues in the WGA strike is the relationship of the profession to large language models, which some (rightly, in our view as a technologist) call "plagiarism machines"
this is not the only issue but it is certainly an important and timely issue. writers tend to be among the first to fully understand new things, it makes sense that they'd be striking over it. solidarity.
A lot of people probably technically correctly will nitpick whether or not it's really plagiarism but you must remember the historical context. Much of what the current strike is about is streaming, which during the last strike was treated as an experimental new technology that amounted to five minute "webisodes" that couldn't amount to anything competitive with traditional TV. So the WGA made a lot of big concessions and now streaming has completely screwed over writers big time such that they're struggling to afford to live in the cities you have to live in to work in this industry.
This time around they're not taking any chances. There's a new technology. They're going to treat it as being the absolute biggest threat it could possibly be. If it could be used to replace a writer on their original show, or to replicate their tone, then even if it's not technically plagiarism it is still being used to eliminate union jobs. It might as well be a plagiarism machine.
I read a tweet, I don't have the source and i can't be assed to find it this close to sleep.
but they were saying that the fear isn't that AI will replace writers. It's that they WILL be paid much less, to edit atrocious AI prompts into salvageable plotlines they have no say in. With no residuals (though streaming was already "disrupting" that).
google translate's been out for nearly 20 years. guess what translators (fan and pro) are asked to do?
if you guessed "re-translate google translate output", you'd be correct.
translating Japanese-language media into English doesn't pay. this is for several reasons:
- subcontracted piece work
- translators like what they do and put more effort in than the company pays them for
- "small (billion-dollar) indie company and Sony subsidiary crunchyroll" doesn't like paying people good rates, or even livable rates; or, y'know, the usual
and that's anime, which has a money printer pouring into it.
the flip side of this is manga. if you go look at mangadex.org, you'll see plenty of machine "translated" manga. or, heck, even vtuber clip channels! the desire for algorithmic content is compelling
point is, as long as there is a 50% solution, people will think, "why not use technology?"
but that's not what art is – sterile, deterministic, and all-the-same, regardless of cultural context.
for all of Hollywood's faults – and as a queer/trans asian, I see many… y'know what, it's not hard to side with the WGA on this.