Hollywood studios have presented a new offer to striking screenwriters, making concessions on the use of artificial intelligence.
AI development and usage has been a motivating factor behind the ongoing Hollywood strikes. The Writer's Guild has called on studios to protect creative professions be ensuring writers are not replaced with AI, which draws from existing materials uncredited.
Writers Receive Offer From Studios
Writers have also asked studios to cease the usage of "mini rooms" — the practice where a team of writers develop a project for a short period of time, and are then fired, often leaving a single person to write the scripts — and instead hire a set amount of writers for a set amount of time.
As reported by Bloomberg, the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers agreed Monday in a new offer to writers to guarantee that humans are credited as writers of screenplays, instead of replacing them with AI. Studios have also agreed to give writers access to viewer data so that they can gauge how popular their shows are.
Other offers include a residual payment increase of over 20 percent when their shows appear on networks other than the original one they were created for, as well as salary increases and a minimum duration of work for those in "mini rooms" who are hired before a show is picked up or renewed.
The writers have asked for a 6 percent raise in the first year of a three-year contract. Studios have since offered 5 percent, up from their previous offer of 4 percent.
Studios and the Guild met on Friday to deliver the new offer. They are expected to meet again today to receive the union's response. While an agreement may not be reached, it marks a step forward in negotiations for the strike, which has been in motion for over 100 days, and was recently bolstered by support from the Screen Actors Guild, which has also initiated a strike against studios.
