LOS ANGELES — With film and television actors potentially joining screenwriters by going on strike as soon as their union’s contract expires Wednesday at 11:59 p.m., debates about Hollywood’s future are escalating quickly.
Figuring prominently in those debates is the rise of artificial intelligence, a technology that the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA — the actors’ union — say is cause for concern.
AI is rapidly becoming a bigger part of the economy, from virtual girlfriends to auto-generated job applications, but the technology’s relationship with Tinseltown is proving particularly fraught, given its ability to generate content. (The quality of the resulting material is up for debate.) The roll-out of this “generative AI” could make workers’ jobs easier — or put them out of work entirely.
