Hollywood Screenwriters Take Aim At ChatGpt

Striking Hollywood actors joined film and television writers on picket lines for the first time in 63 years, cheering and chanting outside major studios with calls for higher streaming-era pay and curbs on use of artificial intelligence.

The twin strikes will add to the economic damage from the writers’ walkout that started on May 2, increasing the pressures facing the multibillion-dollar media industry as it struggles with seismic changes to its business.

In New York City and Los Angeles, actors marched outside the offices of Netflix Inc. Paramount Global and other companies, voicing demands for higher compensation for working-class actors and other gains.

Not six months since the release of ChatGPT, generative artificial intelligence is already prompting widespread unease throughout Hollywood. Concern over chatbots writing or rewriting scripts is one of the leading reasons TV and film screenwriters took to picket lines earlier this week.

Though the Writers Guild of America is striking for better pay in an industry where streaming has upended many of the old rules, AI looms as rising anxiety.