Transcript: AI Stole My Scripts: Rage as Big Tech Takes Without Asking
‘Good Wife’ creator Robert King on the outrage after writers find their words used to train models
Sean McNulty (00:04):
Welcome to The Ankler Podcast. This is Sean McNulty of The Wakeup newsletter here at The Ankler, here in New York City on Tuesday, November 26th. I'm joined in Los Angeles by Richard Rushfield and Chicago by Elaine Low, and we're of course coming to you earlier in the week as it was Richard's idea to be more like Amazon and record on Thanksgiving. That was shot down by me and Elaine. So Richard, you've been hanging out with Andy Jassy there, the Amazon CEO, spending time together. Come on, man. Really?
Richard Rushfield (00:33):
Don't come in on Thanksgiving, don't bother coming in on Christmas. That's my motto here.
Sean McNulty (00:38):
The biggest Ankler motto. Yes, exactly right. We have kind of a two-parter today. Later on, Elaine is going to be talking to a TV showrunner, Robert King of The Good Wife and Elsbeth and many other series, in regards to a great piece she had this week about TV writers discovering that AI has been, in fact, training itself on almost 140,000 of their scripts. Elaine, remind me, what was the AI residual rate in the WGA agreement last year? Do you remember what that number was?
Elaine Low (01:08):
No. It's all of TV writers' worst AI fears come to life this year after what seemed like a very abstract thing last year on all the picket signs, but we'll get into that later.
Sean McNulty (01:22):
Indeed. We also have our resident awards season expert, the Prestige Junkie herself, Katey Rich joining us here on the pod to dive into where all things Oscar are at, as we guess we're midway, two-thirds of the way through the Oscar race. Katey, where do you describe this right now?
Katey Rich (01:39):
We are kind of midway, but also no awards have been handed out yet, so it's a very strange thing that's about to change right after Thanksgiving. You get the Gotham Awards, Critics prizes, and it all kind of goes very fast from here, but we're kind of in the last moment where everyone is desperately sending out their screeners and swag and saying please watch my movie and hoping for the best.