After a five-month strike, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) has officially reached an agreement with Hollywood studios. Writers are officially back at work. And while better residuals, health and pension contributions, and pay increases are unquestionably a big win for the Guild, things get a little murkier when it comes to artificial intelligence. AI quickly turned into a contentious part of the WGA’s negotiations over the past five months, with studios keen on leveraging the technology. The fear, of course, was — and still is — that studios could start replacing human writers with AI technologies like ChatGPT, directly undermining their livelihoods. As per a summary of the new bargaining agreement published by the WGA, “AI can’t write or rewrite literary material, and AI-generated material will not be considered source material.” In many ways, that’s a big win for the union, making it impossible for any writing generated by an AI to be considered literary material, since an AI can’t be considered a “writer.” After all, that’s what the WGA had been demanding from the start. Interestingly, writers still reserve the right to access these tools, with the caveat that employers such as movie or TV studios allow this kind of use. Studios will also have to tell writers if any materials they’re working with were AI-generated. More importantly, the new agreement stipulates that employers should avoid training AI on writers’ material, highlighting growing concerns and lawsuits over possible copyright infringement by companies like OpenAI. However, the wording doesn’t…Strike Ends With Writers Guild Forcing Concessions on AI