Rachel Bloom sits on a patio, on a sort-of-sunny Los Angeles morning. This time yesterday, she was on a picket line. The Golden Globe-winning star and creator of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend has been one of the most prominent celebrity voices speaking out in support of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) strikes over rights around rapidly progressing technology. On Instagram, she posts a photo, pulling a face while clutching a placard that reads: “I asked AI to write this sign and instead it told me to leave my wife?!” Bloom isn’t too worried about the “formulaic” scripts AI creates – for now. “At this moment, things like ChatGPT, they’re very unoriginal, right?” she says. “They’ll be a good writer when they have the pain and trauma of hating themselves because that’s part of what writing is.”
The use of AI has been one of the most talked about demands of the WGA strikes, but one the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers is currently refusing to debate. Bloom says it’s those in charge who concern her. “If you are not artistically ambitious and you’re like, ‘I just want... a formulaic but passable script, that’s very scary,” she says. “[AI] doesn’t yet extrapolate in the way that writers do, but it very well could very soon.”
