In a recent experiment, the Writers Guild of Canada fed famous lines from Canadian movies and TV shows into ChatGPT to see if the AI could improve upon them.
WATCH | WGC’s Nice Try AI on YouTube:
While the results were predictably awkward and funny, they also raised an important question: can AI reflect what it means to talk, act and write like a Canadian?
Today on Commotion, Writers Guild of Canada president Bruce Smith and guild member Anthony Q. Farrell join host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to discuss the threats that professional screenwriters face as AI continues to encroach on the entertainment industry.
We’ve included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.
WATCH | Today’s episode on YouTube:
Elamin: This is the dumbest that AI is ever going to be. It’s only going to get smarter from here. So … how do you see the job changing as AI gets smarter?
Anthony: Well, for me … if AI get smarter, these bots, are they Canadian content? Because they’re going to be ripping material from all around the world, and stealing material from writers in Canada, and America, and Portugal, and Africa and everywhere. And if they put something out, is that considered Canadian content? Can a Canadian production company … be like, “This is a Canadian robot.”? No, this is not going to work, right? So I think for accessibility reasons and for writers who are using AI to help them with certain things, it’s a great tool. It’s a fantastic tool. And I think we should continue to think of it that way, as opposed to thinking about it as something that can replace the people actually doing the job.
Bruce: There’s another point, which is maybe it will get smarter — I mean, as it turns on itself, maybe it won’t in its current model — but there’s also, you know, when I sit my kid down and watch cartoons, I’m not just looking for smarts. I’m looking for some ethics, some morals. If a computer is going to write a whole new season of some animation show that’s been around for ten years, and it stumbles on an issue about self-harm, or suicide, or bullying or issues that are important to my kid, does it have any ethics at all? Who’s checking on that? It could be really smart, so smart that I don’t notice how poisonous its message is. There’s more to the issue than just being good with words. What’s underneath it? What’s the subtext?
Elamin: Bruce, I don’t think AI was something that people were necessarily worried about in the arts even two years ago…. The questions have started to loom pretty quickly. When you step back and look at the big picture, what are the areas where you feel like AI is most aggressively encroaching on the industry?Â
Bruce: In the industry, the cutting edge is animation. The fear, where they’re being most aggressive about using it, is animation … and they’re pretty open about that…. There are producers who used to work in development, who are now running companies that are trying to just generate product completely with AI, without hiring any humans at all.Â
Elamin: That’s pretty aggressive…. Q, beyond the scenario of people losing their jobs and losing their incomes, what do you think we lose philosophically when we outsource the work of Canadian screenwriting and creating creators to AI?
Anthony: We are big here in Canada on identity. There are so many people who have been here from the beginning of time, to people who have settled here — we all consider ourselves Canadian. To be Canadian is a far-reaching, very wide definition. I think it’s important for us to have our voices in these stories, and it’s important for us to have our voices in these shows that we create. I feel like if we go to the AI world, we’re going to be losing all of that. We’re going to be losing our identity. So I think if you’re into the idea of Canadians having a say in what we are like, let’s not hand that over to a bunch of robots who will Americanize us.
You can listen to the full discussion from today’s show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.
Panel produced by Stuart Berman and Jess Low.