New Technology Caused the WGA Strike

By Daniel Rivera, Contributor 

Writer, creator and union strike captain, Bill Wolkoff, told Random Lengths News he wants to make sure future writers inherit a career rather than a gig job. 

Most recently, Wolkoff wrote four episodes for the first season of Star Trek: Strange New World (2022). He developed, executive produced, and served as co-showrunner for Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts (2020), an animated saga produced by Dreamworks TV. 

He was also a writer and story editor on ABC’s hit series Once Upon a Time (2011) and was on staff for the Emmy-nominated Star Wars: Rebels (2014).  He’s married to comedy writer and director Courtney Davis.  He has a child, two cats and a dog. Wolkoff bikes to work every day in a tie.

Wolkoff’s view reflects an alarm at the ways technology is changing the working landscape with higher volume streaming shows, increased accessibility and the introduction of artificial intelligence along the production pipeline.  

Back in May 2023, near the start of the strike, Wolkoff told WBUR (a Boston-based public radio station), that he was striking because the model that served writers and creators is broken. 

“They have found ways to create loopholes that diminish the writers,” Wolkoff said. “It’s to the point where it’s become a gig economy, where we work, maybe 10 to 20 weeks a year and have to string together, gigs, and are constantly scrambling to in order to find a job. It’s not sustainable.”

The Writers Guild of America or the WGA strike is now going into its tenth week, forcing many shows to either air reruns or halt production altogether. The demands more or less revolve around residuals, AI writing, and long-term employment. One of the ways writers are paid is in the form of residuals. According to the WGA, the writers are paid when the product (the TV show) is reused or aired again. 

“Writing as a career has become unsustainable with these larger corporate companies trying to undervalue the work we do,” said Kendall Sherwood, who worked on Hawaii Five-O. One of the ways this is occurring is with the use of AI writers. AI writers will write the first draft, then humans will do corrections and rewrites, which they can be paid less for since they did less work. 

According to the proposals laid out by both sides, the WGA wants to ban the use of AI as a source for literary materials. The Alliance of Motion Pictures and Television Producers’ counteroffer was to hold annual meetings over the use of AI to address advances in technology and related concerns. 

The WGA isn’t the only group on strike. Workers from other unions have joined the fight in solidarity. From janitors who lost their jobs due to the freeze in production to members of the Screen Actors Guild who are joining the strike while their union negotiates with the AMPTP. Some big names were out there on the picket, one of which was comedian and SAG member, Adam Conover.

“In terms of streaming, the companies used streaming as an excuse to pay everyone in Hollywood less,” Conover said.

One of the ways this happens is through the lack of [ratings] transparency for the streaming services. Broadcast television has the Nielsen Corporation. YouTube has built-in analytics that capture views from the aggregate to the unique. It even collects data that explains the how much and the how long. But for streaming services like Netflix or Hulu, there’s no measuring stick for those outside of those companies.  Wolkoff said this very lack of transparency is what’s being directly addressed in negotiations. 

The AMPTP has yet to provide a counteroffer to WGA in regards to transparency and pay based on viewership. 

Nonunion workers also marched in solidarity, including a production assistant, Jess James, who is an aspiring member of the union. 

The picket line for the Writers Guild of America strike. Photo by Daniel Rivera

“As someone who hopes to become a writer in the WGA … there seems to be no consensus on what’s going on, there is so much happening,” she explains. And this is reflected in the negotiations themselves, as many of the various proposals from the WGA have yet to be offered a counterproposal in any way. 

One writer who would prefer to stay anonymous explained that they think the reason these changes are happening is that trying to reduce human work with AI, more gig-style work, is common practice in the tech industry. 

AI, for example, is often used in a variety of software, often in the form of machine learning so that an app or a website can optimize either what it’s trying to sell or show you (think Google services) or so that it can execute commands faster or more efficiently, in which case, think problem-solving or navigation. 

The commonplace practices of the tech world along with some of its perspectives are sinking into the creative industries, like reducing human labor and limited ownership. This is similar to licensing, when you buy a piece of software, often you don’t own it, whether it be a movie or an app. That license is a use license, often they include protections against modification and carry sole distribution rights.  

Historically, the last strike was in 2007 and went on for 14 weeks, modifying the runtime, episode numbers, and production of several shows in the process. 

Member corporations of the AMPTP did not return any emails regarding the strike.