TV producers wanted AI rights of extras forever, says union - eviltoast
  • hoodatninja@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Which is why these union negotiations are so important. Sure, that will probably happen. But if SAG-AFTRA says they can’t be used on union shows, well, they won’t be lol

    When I first started in film any time I had a SAG actor there were requirements I had to adhere to for their pay and hours, no exceptions. And I live in a right to work state!

    • Kichae@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      And I live in a right to work state!

      Right-to-work is the work-for-welfare program. I would imagine it would have no impact on people who aren’t applying for social services.

      I’m assuming the overlap between right-to-work and at-will-empmloyment states is a near perfect circle, though. And the fun thing about at-will employment is that it’s totally nullified by an actual, mutually negoatiated employment contract, with, like, responsibilities laid on the employer and consequences for failing to perform them. You know, like what you get with a strong union.

    • bioemerl@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      But if SAG-AFTRA says they can’t be used on union shows, well, they won’t be lol

      Union shows immidiately get outcompeted by AI generation and all studios doing business with them go out of business.

      AI is the future here guys. Union won’t stop it. They’ll just drag Hollywood down with them.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Only if Hollywood wants to go completely non-union. Good luck with that. IATSE isn’t going to crow a movie if SAG-AFTRA and the WGA aren’t involved. Maybe they’ll find enough non-union crew to do a big time movie, but they’ll be making it in the Philippines.

        • bioemerl@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Or in America.

          In the long term, AI is going to be such a massive force multiplier that you’ll be able to get away with non union writers and actors.

          If all goes well you will be able to produce a film in your basement and have it rival the quantity of the current big boys. That will be a long while, but in the meantime any industry that loses a 2x productivity boost will die to its competition.

          Especially in the modern world. Centralized stars and production is crazy in a world where you can pull out a camera and buy a rendering supercomputer for a few thousand dollars.

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Maybe years down the road, but we’re talking about today. Making a non-union movie and expecting it to be something like a Marvel movie- it won’t. It will be a movie that will end up on Mystery Science Theater 3000 because it will suck.

            • bioemerl@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              A deal made today will still be in effect in a decade, and the use of AI is already in effect in smaller ways, especially with the deage tech.

      • hoodatninja@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        There’s a difference between “no AI allowed” (not what the unions are calling for) and “contracts need stipulations about AI usage” (reasonable).

        If you are not familiar with what is actually being negotiated over, then please don’t weigh in. WGA/SAG-AFTRA are not calling for an AI ban. Every time these debates come up armchair AI “advocates” swarm like cryptobros to call everyone backwards/ignorant/resistant to change regardless of the context.

        • bioemerl@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          There’s a difference between “no AI allowed” (not what the unions are calling for) and “contracts need stipulations about AI usage”

          If those contacts include paying actors as much as they would have needed to act and restricting it’s usage when writing scripts the difference is moot. If your erase all benefit to using AI it becomes worthless.

            • bioemerl@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              They 100 percent want to reduce AI usage so that writers can’t be automated away.

              Mr. August, a screenwriter for movies like “Charlie’s Angels” and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” said that while artificial intelligence had taken a back seat to compensation in the Writers Guild negotiation, the union was making two key demands on the subject of automation.

              It wants to ensure that no literary material — scripts, treatments, outlines or even discrete scenes — can be written or rewritten by chatbots. “A terrible case of like, ‘Oh, I read through your scripts, I didn’t like the scene, so I had ChatGPT rewrite the scene’ — that’s the nightmare scenario,” Mr. August said.

              The guild also wants to ensure that studios can’t use chatbots to generate source material that is adapted to the screen by humans, the way they might adapt a novel or a magazine story.

              https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/business/media/writers-guild-hollywood-ai-chatgpt.html

              • hoodatninja@kbin.social
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                1 year ago

                They 100 percent want to reduce AI usage

                Yes I agree. That is what I’ve been saying this entire time.

                I don’t see the problem. Want to use AI to fart out cheap written content or highjack someone’s script? Don’t use the studio system. It’s never been easier to shoot and distribute without Hollywood/unions.

                Either way, AI isn’t banned from Hollywood. They are calling for regulation on specific use cases involving union writers.

        • bioemerl@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          I use it every day. I didn’t say it was as that level. I said it would get there in the future.