The protections won in 2023 remain the rules of the road, and every writer taking a job should know what a producer can and cannot ask

WGA AI Rules Explained: What Screenwriters Can Rely On

Amid the debate over what the Writers Guild did not win on artificial intelligence this year, it is easy to lose sight of what it already has. The provisions agreed after the 2023 strike are still in force, and according to the guild’s negotiators they have held up. For a writer starting a project now, they are the practical rules.

The Core Provisions

A production payroll company’s guide to the 2023 agreement sets them out clearly. According to its summary of what the deal means for writers:

A machine cannot be the one who writes or rewrites a script.

Whatever an AI system produces does not count as source material.

No company can make AI software a compulsory part of a writing job.

If a writer is handed anything that was produced with AI, the company has to say so.

The guild keeps its right to argue that training AI on writers’ material is barred by the contract or by law.

What Each Means in Practice

These short statements have concrete consequences.

AI is not a writer. Under the contract, “literary material” is what writers produce and are paid and credited for. Because AI output is not literary material, a studio cannot treat a machine-generated draft as a script written by someone else. As a filmmaking site’s primer on the negotiations put it, under the contract AI is not considered a writer and its output is not literary material.

AI output is not source material. This is the provision that protects pay and credit. If a writer adapts a novel, the novel is source material, which affects the credit the writer can receive and sometimes the fee. If a producer hands a writer an AI-generated treatment and asks for a screenplay, the writer is treated as having written an original work, not an adaptation. The writer’s compensation and credit are not reduced because a machine produced something first.

No compulsion. A company cannot make the use of AI tools a condition of the job. A writer may choose to use them, with the company’s consent and subject to its policies, but cannot be ordered to.

Disclosure. If a writer is given material to work from, the company must say whether AI generated any of it. This matters for the reasons above, and because a writer is entitled to know what they are building on.

Training reserved. The guild did not concede that studios may use scripts to train models. It reserved its position. The 2026 agreement added a requirement that companies notify the guild if they license writers’ work for that purpose.

A Scenario

Consider a common worry. A producer generates a rough script with an AI tool and offers a writer a low fee to “polish” it. Under the rules, that will not work as intended at a signatory company. The generated text is not literary material and not source material. The writer who turns it into a screenplay is the writer of the screenplay, entitled to the minimum for the work actually done, which is likely to be that of a first draft, and to be considered for credit accordingly.

What the Rules Do Not Cover

There are limits worth understanding.

The agreement binds only signatory companies and applies only to covered work. A non-union producer is not bound.

The rules do not stop a studio from using AI in development for its own purposes, such as generating ideas internally, so long as it does not treat the output as a writer’s work or conceal it from a writer who is hired.

They do not prevent a writer from voluntarily using AI. A writer who does so should be aware of the company’s policy and of unresolved questions about the copyright status of machine-generated text.

They do not settle whether training on scripts is permitted.

Enforcement

Contract language is only as good as its enforcement. A writer who believes a company has violated these provisions should contact the guild, which can pursue a grievance. Individual writers are often reluctant to complain about an employer. That is the function of a union.

For Writers Outside the Guild

Those not yet members can still use these provisions as a model. When negotiating with a non-signatory producer, a writer or their lawyer can ask for similar terms: that the writer will be credited and paid as the author regardless of any AI-generated material supplied, that such material will be disclosed, and that the writer will not be required to use AI tools. Not every producer will agree. Asking costs nothing.

Why This Matters for the Craft

The significance goes beyond contracts. The provisions affirm that writing is something a person does. A screenplay is the product of a writer’s choices about character, structure and meaning. Tools can assist. Under these rules they do not replace the writer as the author of record.

Whether that remains true in practice will depend on how the industry behaves in the next four years and on whether the guild can hold the line.

A Lighter Postscript

Screenwriters have long been the butt of industry jokes, and occasionally the authors of them. The London Prat adds a few in its English satirical news on screenwriters and UK satirical news about the film industry. Bohiney Magazine covers the American trade.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/