John August

John

Writer Emergency Pack XL now on Amazon

Writer Emergency Pack

Writer Emergency Pack deck standing on its edge, with two cards leaning against it

After a Kafkaesque bureaucratic journey, ((Twelve weeks of phone calls, emails and international zooms to resolve what was ultimately a checkbox error. I’m so grateful for the folks who helped us fix it, but wow, it was an ordeal.)) Writer Emergency Pack XL is [finally on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/Writer-Emergency-Pack-XL/dp/B0BXJVY1X7)!

We’re available on Amazon’s US and Canadian stores — but many international buyers choose to order from one of those storefronts for ease of shipping, so if that’s your experience, go for it.

Because we’re a new listing, we currently have zero reviews on Amazon. That makes us sad. If you have a deck and love it, we’d really appreciate you [leaving a review](https://www.amazon.com/Writer-Emergency-Pack-XL/dp/B0BXJVY1X7).

People ask, and yes, we make a little more money when you buy it [directly from us](http://writeremergency.com), but the difference isn’t huge. The carbon footprint is marginally lower, because we ship directly from our printing facility in Florida.

As with the original Writer Emergency Pack, this new edition is only possible because of the support of our incredible [Kickstarter backers](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/johnaugust/writer-emergency-pack-xl). Through their pledges, we’ve been able to send decks to over 2,000 classrooms across the US.

Speaking to the FTC about generative AI

News, WGA

This afternoon, I represented the WGA at a [virtual roundtable](https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/09/ftc-host-virtual-roundtable-ai-content-creation) organized by the Federal Trade Commission on the impact of AI on creative professions. It ended up being a great panel that brought together a range of disciplines from writing to music to visual arts.

In her opening remarks, FTC Chair Lina M. Khan called out the WGA’s recent wins in establishing AI protections, as did commissioners Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya.

The full video of the panel will be up at some point, but in the meantime, here are my opening remarks, prepared with our incredible Guild staff members Laura Blum-Smith, Erica Knox and Rachel Torres.

—

I’m here on behalf of the Writers Guild of America West, a labor union representing thousands of writers of film, television and streaming series. Our members, and the members of Writers Guild of America East, have just concluded a 148-day strike where artificial intelligence was a key issue. Our fellow artists at SAG-AFTRA are still on strike, with AI as a core issue for them as well. But the fight for protection over our craft and livelihoods doesn’t stop at the bargaining table—while we have been able to achieve groundbreaking protections for writers, we need public policy solutions too. 


Obviously, copyright is an area of government scrutiny, both the copyrightability of AI-generated works, and the degree to which training AI models infringes on copyright. WGA writers do not hold copyright for the scripts we write; those are works made for hire, so the studios—our employers—hold the copyright. But through the power of our union, we have over the decades negotiated an assortment of contractual rights in the works we create, including the right to payment for reuse of our work. It’s a good reminder that while copyright is important, it’s not the end of the story when it comes to protecting artists.


The Guild’s new agreement offers helpful guidance in thinking about future public policy on AI. Our agreement defines that AI is not a writer and that the material it generates is not equivalent to human writing for the purposes of our contract. That means AI cannot rewrite us, nor can it compete with a human writer for credit and the associated financial benefit of that credit. Further, the studios now have to tell us if they are providing us with material generated by AI, and they cannot require us to use AI tools.

We won these protections because we’re a strong union that successfully carried off a nearly five-month strike. But we need to remember that most writers and most artists in this country don’t have unions to protect them. It’s best to think of writers and other artists as tiny businesses, each competing in the marketplace to sell their work. Writers and artists each develop a unique style, voice and brand in order to distinguish themselves. AI fundamentally disrupts that market in ways that could be devastating to the creative economy.


Large language models like the one that underpins ChatGPT have scraped massive volumes of data including our words, our unique perspective. This is theft, not fair use. Our works—protected by copyright and our own contractual rights—are being used entirely without our authorization, without any attribution or any compensation. Right now, you could ask ChatGPT to write something “in the style of” a particular writer, and it would try to do that—appropriate the unique voice of a writer, without that writer’s consent.

As FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya [recently suggested](https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-09-04/writers-strike-artificial-intelligence-actors-body-scans-chatgpt-jet-li), this could constitute an unfair method of competition. It is using stolen goods to undercut the price of a seller and create market confusion. And it’s not a hypothetical. Right now, authors are finding [AI-generated knock-offs of their work](https://www.axios.com/2023/08/16/ai-book-publishing-fake-amazon) published on Amazon. They’re having to fight to get those fakes taken down, and protect their brands.

This form of AI appropriation may also have consumer implications. From electronics to organic eggs, consumers expect to be told the origin of a product, and its authenticity. Consumers make choices based on that information. The same will likely be true with AI.

With this strike and this contract, the Writers Guild was able to win groundbreaking AI protections for writers. But it’s important to remember our deal only covers the film and television studios. Most of the real work in AI is being done by companies like Google, Facebook and OpenAI, with which the Guild has no contractual relationship. Public policy will play a crucial role in protecting our members.

In conclusion, AI has the potential to assist the creative community, but only with the consent of that community. Without guardrails, AI poses a profound threat to writers and the integrity of our creative work. AI and its use raises major questions of intellectual property, of transparency, of competition, all of which requires careful oversight to protect the creative economy.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak on behalf of film and television writers.

FTC proposes new merger guidelines

Film Industry, News, WGA

The Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice have drafted new [merger guidelines](https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/07/ftc-doj-seek-comment-draft-merger-guidelines) outlining how the agencies should approach corporate consolidations.

Here are the key points:

1. Mergers should not significantly increase concentration in highly concentrated markets.
2. Mergers should not eliminate substantial competition between firms.
3. Mergers should not increase the risk of coordination.
4. Mergers should not eliminate a potential entrant in a concentrated market.
5. Mergers should not substantially lessen competition by creating a firm that controls products or services that its rivals may use to compete.
6. Vertical mergers should not create market structures that foreclose competition.
7. Mergers should not entrench or extend a dominant position.
8. Mergers should not further a trend toward concentration.
9. When a merger is part of a series of multiple acquisitions, the agencies may examine the whole series.
10. When a merger involves a multi-sided platform, the agencies examine competition between platforms, on a platform, or to displace a platform.
11. When a merger involves competing buyers, the agencies examine whether it may substantially lessen competition for workers or other sellers.
12. When an acquisition involves partial ownership or minority interests, the agencies examine its impact on competition.
13. Mergers should not otherwise substantially lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly.

These are good principles! Notably, they’re not obsessed with whether a merger is likely to raise prices for consumers. Rather, they look more broadly at how consolidation impacts all the components of an industry.

The FTC has invited public comment on these draft guidelines. As of today, there are over 1,000 comments. The WGA has encouraged its members to [share their experiences](https://secure.everyaction.com/FsY4lF9SsEmjHM4YWKB7lA2). Citizens working in every industry should write in as well. Mergers affect all of us, and these policies could shape the next few decades.

I submitted my comment today. Here’s what I wrote.

—

I’m a screenwriter and novelist who has seen firsthand the impact of mergers and consolidation in the film and publishing industries. That’s why I’m writing in support of the FTC and DOJ’s Draft Merger Guidelines. We need to revive and rethink antitrust enforcement in this country so that it recognizes consolidation’s impact on workers, sellers, consumers and citizens.

My work as a screenwriter has found me working for both Disney (including 2019’s *Aladdin*) and what remains of Fox (where I currently have a series in development). I believe Disney should never have been allowed to buy 21st Century Fox in 2019. Not only did it increase concentration and reduce competition for consumers, it did the same for writers. This issue is addressed in Point 11 of your draft guidelines: “When a merger involves competing buyers, the agencies examine whether it may substantially lessen competition for workers or other sellers.”

When Disney bought Fox, it came at the immediate cost of redundant employees’ jobs. It then created downward pressure on the wages throughout the industry, with one less buyer for the services of writers, directors, actors and crew.

I can offer a specific example from my own experience. In 2018, Fox brought me in to meet on a high-profile book adaption for their Fox Family division. By the time it came to make my writing deal, the proposed Disney merger was announced and the division wasn’t allowed to pursue any project that might compete with Disney’s own. All of the executives on the project were let go.

In the process of Hollywood development, projects disappear and executives get fired all the time. What was unique is how this merger broke so many pieces simultaneously, from studio feature films to indies to cable to broadcast television. We should consider not just the immediate negative impact, but also the after effects. Tom Rothman, who used to run Fox’s film division, noted that “Consolidation under giant corporate mandates rarely promotes creative risk-taking. And in the long run, it is always a challenge to compete against horizontal monopolistic power.”

I also work as an author, with three books published by Macmillan and an upcoming book published by Crown (Penguin Random House). Consolidation in the industry means that 60% of books published in English come from just five publishers, and we nearly dropped to four. They have unprecedented control over the market, limiting options for retailers, authors and readers.

I’m a proud member of the Writers Guild of America, West, and have served on both its board and negotiating committee. The entertainment industry’s history of unchecked consolidation is a major factor in the strike of 11,500 writers including myself on May 2 against our employers, who collectively negotiate our three year contract as the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). SAG-AFTRA has joined us on strike, their 170,000 members seeking a contract that fairly compensates us for the value we create.

It is essential that antitrust agencies consider how any future proposed mergers in this industry — such as the long-rumored Apple/Disney deal — would impact writers and other industry workers. It’s not enough to wait and see; antitrust agencies should proactively investigate and announce decisions, so CEOs don’t propose deals that paralyze the industry.

These Draft Merger Guidelines are the solid principles we need to maintain a vibrant, competitive environment that serves all Americans.

Thank you for the consideration of my comments.

—

You can submit your own comment on the FTC’s [public comment page](https://www.regulations.gov/commenton/FTC-2023-0043-0001).

My history with AI

Software, WGA

As part of the WGA’s negotiating committee, I’ve done a lot of work (and press) on behalf of the Guild’s proposal regarding AI, which seeks to regulate the use of AI on MBA-covered projects.

Specifically, the proposal would ensure that AI-generated material is not considered “literary material” or “source material” — two terms with specific and important meaning in our contract. Getting this language in our contract protects writers from having AI write or rewrite us, and ensures that the things we write isn’t fed into the algorithm to generate “new” versions of our work. ((We sometimes call this the “Nora Ephron Problem,” the idea that you could feed Nora Ephron’s screenplays into a system and generate a “new” script in her voice.))

Amid the list of other urgent concerns about compensation and working conditions, the Guild’s AI proposal might seem like an outlier. Indeed, when it was first proposed as an addition to our pattern of demands back in November, some members of the committee wondered if it was too early. ChatGPT had only just been announced, and very few people had experimented with it.

But I’d had an early preview of similar technologies, and a sense that we needed to be thinking about AI issues now.

In addition to my day job writing movies, I run a tiny software company. We make Weekend Read and Highland, which is maybe the third most popular screenwriting app. One cool thing about working in software is that you meet other people in tech. In August 2021, a friend introduced me to Amit Gupta, who was starting a company called Sudowrite. He described as “Photoshop for text.” That’s a cool pitch.

A tool or a weapon?

I met with Amit and saw a demo. The app was just a web page with a text box. You could click buttons and have it rewrite the text you provided, or expand upon it. It was primitive, but it felt like magic. This was more than a year before ChatGPT, but it provided the similar level of “wait, is this actually possible?” intrigue. And right after that, a corollary feeling of “wait, this could be really bad if used for evil.”

How do you make sure this is a tool used by writers, like spellcheck and Wikipedia, and not a tool used to replace writers?

I wasn’t ensorcelled; I recognized that if Sudowrite could do this, other companies could as well, including companies with no qualms about replacing writers. (Indeed, most of the early competitors focused on writing ad copy and SEO-optimized websites.)

My company made a small investment in Amit’s company and started talking about ways actual writers might use this technology. They were focused on prose fiction, which made sense. Screenwriting is weird. As a person who sells an app that formats it, it’s a small and specialized market. The world is full of folks who write fiction, especially fan fiction. They would be a better fit for the tool as it stood.

I’m listed as an advisor to Sudowrite, but that overstates my involvement. I haven’t hyped it up or used it beyond those initial few weeks. As far as I know, none of my books or scripts have been used in any of its training. Neither I nor my company ever made a cent from our investment in Sudowrite, and never incorporated any of their stuff into the apps we sell.

My interactions with Sudowrite gave me an early preview of what was compelling and troubling about the intersection of AI and writing, which helped put it on the Guild’s radar.

GPT-2-point-something

I wasn’t the only person who was intrigued by these AI writing tools. Stephen Follows, a data scientist I’d worked with on figuring out the truth behind the “one page per minute” rule and other screenwriting esoterica, reached out in June 2022 to say that he and a friend were working on a project to write a screenplay using AI.

He invited me to come on their podcast to discuss it. They shared their screen to show how they were using an early version of OpenAI’s GPT tool to generate screenplay scenes. Bad scenes, it must be noted. Like, not even first year of film school scenes. But it was the first time I saw people using this kind of tool to do the kind of work we are hired to do in film and TV. And when they said they were working with a guild-signatory producer, that set off alarm bells.

How do you determine credit? Who is the writer of record? Would a script created this way even be copyrightable?

I raised these concerns in the podcast, but then reached out to the Guild to put this on their radar. In early July, I had my first phone calls and conversations with Guild staff about how situation like this could handled under existing rules and definitions.

This was all before ChatGPT, which debuted in November 2022.

The WGA West assembled a board committee to study the issue, ultimately recommending the proposal which was included in our pattern of demands. It was quirk of the calendar that our three-year contract was coming up before the use of these AI system had become widespread. As ChatGPT 3 evolved to the much more capable ChatGPT 4, it became clear that waiting another three years to address the issue was not an option.

Studio silence

As noted on the two-page summary of where our issues stand as the WGA went out on strike, the studios rejected our proposal and refused to make a counter. In the room, they said that the technology is new and they are not inclined to limit their ability to use this new technology in the future.

That’s ominous and unacceptable. I believe we have to address this issue in our contract now. We can’t spend three years stalling with committees.

Along with our other urgent needs for compensation and working conditions, I believe we’ll ultimately win these necessary gains in regulating AI. As evidenced by the 2007 strike over the internet, our members understand how important it is to grapple with new technology before it becomes entrenched.

But even when we win this battle, the issues surrounding material generated by AI won’t be over.

As writers and a society, we have to grapple with the implications of this technology. How do we ensure the material used to train these models is provided with consent, credit and compensation? How do we deal with the bias? How do we treat the material output by these systems in terms of copyright? There are myriad concerns that go well beyond our contract, and will require developing both ethical and legal frameworks. I discussed some of those at this week’s listening session with the U.S. Copyright Office.

My early look at Sudowrite and related systems gave me a brief preview of a few of these issues, but none of the answers. We’re going to be grappling with the implications of these technologies for years.