If we replaced Hollywood writers with AI… would anyone notice?

The real problem is that much of Hollywood is more interested in making the next 'Captain Awesome' movie than another Citizen Kane...

The Writers Guild of America (WGA) has, apparently, gone on strike — representing the first Hollywood strike in 15 years.

To put things into perspective, the last time there was a writer’s strike, Conan O’Brien spent portions of his show trying to spin his wedding ring for a record amount of time and Daniel Craig had to help rewrite the script for Quantum of Solace (which didn’t work out great).

Outside of late-night TV audiences and stressed-out studio executives, however, it’s difficult to tell that anyone noticed the sudden absence of screenwriters. Nonetheless, today’s strike is noteworthy for reasons that aren’t tied directly to the nature of unionized grievances over working conditions and compensation.

Sure, the writers want more money — especially in our current era of streaming services and decentralized content. (But don’t we all?) And, yes: Screenwriters have long had a bit of a victimhood-mentality when it comes to their generally unappreciated role in the Hollywood hierarchy. But the real noteworthy aspect to this strike is that screenwriters are, evidently, worried about being replaced by machines in the not-too-distant future.

As part of its negotiations with producers, studios and productions, the WGA is working to ensure its members aren’t replaced with an AI software designed to generate the next late night monologue — which seems like a reasonable concern.

As Allissa Wilkinson wrote in Vox:

… the appeal of AI to Hollywood, in particular to replace writers, is obvious. For one, the industry is sitting atop a pile of data that tells them not just what people want in the aggregate, but what, precisely, individual consumers want… Sure, it might seem like the results would be repetitive. But consider the extraordinary popularity of highly formulaic entertainment — procedurals, sitcoms, action flicks, Hallmark movies — and you can start to see the appeal for platforms whose main goal is to keep you watching.

Wilkinson is probably right… And while that’s worrisome to Hollywood writers, it also unintentionally exposes what makes many writers so easily replaceable with machines in the first place.

She’s absolutely correct that AI is a looming threat to many of the writer jobs in Hollywood — but that has less to do with the wonders of modern computing abilities, and a whole lot more to do with the low-value content being produced in our current era of formulaic and “franchised” world of entertainment.

Maybe — and this is just spit-balling here — but maybe if Hollywood was cranking out films with a little more depth than the visually-spectacular CGI superhero reboots we’ve come to expect every blockbuster season, writers wouldn’t be too worried about being replaced by an intern putting a prompt into a Chat-GPT engine. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Martin Scorsese was kind of on to something when he flippantly commented that such mass-produced theater fodder isn’t “real” cinema.

Indeed, much of what has come to define the regular output of the cinematic scene in the last 20 years hasn’t been a rousing creative triumph. There have certainly been masterpieces along the way — pretty much anything with the Coen Brothers attached to it, for example. However, much of the regular outflow from Hollywood Inc has been reboots of 1980’s blockbusters, recycled Marvel Comic story concepts, or romcoms that are effectively nothing more than fan-fiction rewrites of the love triangles we’ve found in every romcom from the 90s.

The idea that such cinematic (and streaming) drudgery might soon become the responsibility of a tireless bank of hard drives isn’t a difficult thing to imagine — as dystopian as it might be for those “writers” currently toiling away on the 29th Avengers film (which will feel remarkably similar to the 28th).