Show and movie writers everywhere are putting down their pens and picking up their signs in protest. For countless years, writers in the film industry have been seen as less important than the actors and producers, therefore leading to them receiving lower wages. This issue has gotten so bad, that recently, producers have turned to using A.I. to write for them, making it so that they don’t have to pay writers at all. However, recently, the Writers Guild of America, a labor union composed of all different types of writers across different types of media, have been determined to make a change by refusing to write until they are both no longer in fear of being replaced by A.I., and being paid fairly for their skill and effort. This collective movement among film writers everywhere has become known as “The WGA Strike” or “The Writers Strike.”
One of the major parts of the WGA Strike is writers protesting against A.I. writing. Many producers view A.I. writing as an easier and cheaper alternative to having human writers. However, this is extremely harmful to not only the writers who are being put out of their jobs, but also to the integrity of the work being written for. While it is true that A.I. is quicker and requires little to no pay, work produced by any form of A.I. is often at least somewhat stolen from other artists or writers. Also, A.I. work is typically very dry, and its usually pretty easy to tell if something was written by an actual human, or just some computer robot.
Due to the Writers Strike, the release of many anticipated movies and T.V. series, such as “Stranger Things,” “The Last of Us,” and “Spiderman: Beyond the Spiderverse,” to name a few, have been delayed. Despite the clear solution of paying their writers better, which would result in these productions and all the others which were delayed returning to their original release dates, the producers in the Hollywood scene refuse to simply pay their writers fairly. Until this whole mess is resolved, expect to be waiting a while for the next season of your favorite show.
If there’s one thing this situation has shown, it’s just how important writers are to the film industry and the Hollywood scene. Without the writers, there is no show. Simple as that. Writers are just as important and valuable to the film industry as the actors and directors. They give film a quality that A.I. simply cannot achieve. And yet, big companies such as Netflix and Warner Brothers still refuse to give writers the wages they deserve, something they most definitely have the resources and money to do, and instead threaten to replace them with A.I. If you’d like to give your support to this movement, please continue to raise your voices against big companies such as Netflix and Disney, who have continuously ignored the writers’ pleas for better pay and to ban the use of A.I. in the film industry. Together, we can make a change and make the film industry fairer for the writers who work so hard to provide our favorite film pieces for us.
