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A few thoughts on Sora

February 16, 2024 Film Industry, Geek Alert, WGA

Yesterday, OpenAI announced [Sora](https://openai.com/sora), a new product that generates realistic video from text prompts. ((Sora is a great name, btw. It doesn’t mean anything, and doesn’t have any specific connotation, yet feels like something that should exist.)) The examples are remarkable.

A TV writer friend texted me to ask “is it time to be petrified?”

I wrote back:

> I don’t think you need to be petrified. It’s very impressive at creating video in a way that’s like how Dall-E does images. A huge achievement. For pre-viz? Mood reels? Incredible. We’ll see stuff coming out of it used in commercials first.

> For longer, narrative stuff, there’s a real challenge moving from text generation (gpt-4 putting together something that looks like a script) to “filming” that script with these tools to resemble anything like our movies and television.

> Writers, directors, actors and crew have a sense of why they’re doing what they’re doing, and what makes sense in this fictitious reality they’re creating. I don’t think you can do that without consciousness, without self-awareness, and if/when AI gets there, stuff like Sora will be the least of our concerns.

With a night to sleep on it, I think there are a few larger, more immediate concerns. Writers (and humans in general) should be aware of but not petrified by some of the implications of this technology beyond the obvious ones like deepfakes and disinformation.

1. **Video as input.** Like image generators, this technology can work off of a text prompt. But you can also feed it video and have it change things. Do you want *A Few Good Men*, but with Muppets? Done. Need to [replace Kevin Spacey](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/jan/05/removing-kevin-spacey-from-movie-was-a-business-decision-says-ridley-scott-all-the-money-in-the-world) in a movie? No need to reshoot anything. Just let Sora do it.

2. **Remake vs. refresh.** Similarly, any existing film or television episode could be “redone” with this technology. In some cases, that could mean a restoration or visual effects refresh, like George Lucas did with Star Wars. Or it could be what we’d consider a remake, where the original writer gets paid. What’s the difference between a refresh and a remake, and who decides?

3. **Animation vs. live action.** How do we define the video material that comes out of Sora? It can look like live action, but wasn’t filmed with cameras. It can look like animation, but it didn’t come out of an animation process. This matters because while the WGA represents writers of both live action and animation, studios are not currently required to use WGA writers in animation. **We can’t let this technology to be used as an end-run around WGA (and other guild) jurisdiction.**

4. **Reality engines.** In a [second paper](https://openai.com/research/video-generation-models-as-world-simulators), OpenAI notes that Sora could point to “general purpose simulators of the physical world.” The implications go far beyond any disruptive effects on Hollywood, and are worth a closer look.

It seems like a long way to go from videos of cute paper craft turtles to The Matrix, but it’s worth taking the progress they’ve made here seriously. In generating video, Sora does a few things that are really difficult, and resemble human developmental milestones.

Like all models, Sora is predictive, making guesses about what just happened and what happens next. But it feels different because it’s doing this in a 3D space that largely tracks with our lived experience. It remembers objects, even if they’re not on screen at the moment, and recognizes interactions between objects, such as paintbrushes leaving marks on the canvas. ((Not to dive too deeply into theories of human consciousness, but the ability to internally model reality and predict things feel like table stakes.))

Sora makes mistakes, but the results surprisingly good for a system that wasn’t explicitly trained to do anything other than generate video. Those capabilities could be used to do other things. In a jargon-heavy paragraph, OpenAI notes:

> Sora is also able to simulate artificial processes — one example is video games. Sora can simultaneously control the player in Minecraft with a basic policy while also rendering the world and its dynamics in high fidelity. These capabilities can be elicited zero-shot by prompting Sora with captions mentioning “Minecraft.”

Sora “gets” Minecraft because it’s ingested countless hours of Minecraft videos. If it’s able to create a simulation of the game that is indistinguishable from the original, is there really a difference? If it’s able to create a convincing simulation of reality based on the endless video it scapes, what are the implications for “our” reality?

These are questions for philosophers, sure, but we’re all going to be faced with them sooner than we’d like. Sora and its descendants are going to have an impact beyond the cool video they generate.

Sidecast: WGA Ratifies its Contract

Episode - SC36

Go to Archive

October 11, 2023 Scriptnotes, Sidecast, Strike, WGA

It’s official – the WGA has ratified its contract with the AMPTP. John and Drew look at how the votes were distributed, what happens next, and what to keep in mind as SAG-AFTRA moves forward in their negotiations.

Links:

* [2023 MBA Ratified – WGA](https://www.wgacontract2023.org/announcements/2023-mba-ratified)
* [SAG-AFTRA on Strike!](https://www.sagaftrastrike.org/)
* [WGA Solidarity with SAG-AFTRA](https://www.wgacontract2023.org/take-action/union-solidarity)
* John on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/johnaugust), [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en) and [Mastodon](https://mastodon.art/@johnaugust)
* Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/SC36standard.mp3).

Storytelling and the Strike

October 10, 2023 Scriptnotes, Transcribed, WGA

John sits down with WGA Negotiating Committee co-chair Chris Keyser to look at how writers crafted the narrative of the strike. From establishing the premise and themes, identifying characters, and all the way down to specific word choices, we dissect the choices, revisions, and tactics used to guide the MBA negotiations to a successful conclusion.

We also answer listener questions on foreign levies and writers’ relationship with the studios going forward.

In our bonus segment for premium members, we discuss Chris Keyser’s debate career and make a strong argument for how it shaped his skills as an orator.

Links:

* [Chris Keyser’s speech to members at the start of negotiations](https://johnaugust.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Member-Rap-22.0.pdf)
* [Scriptnotes, Episode 389 – The Future of the Industry](https://johnaugust.com/2019/the-future-of-the-industry)
* [One Revolution Per Minute](https://erikwernquist.com/one-revolution-per-minute) by Erik Wernquist
* [American Dream](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099028/) on IMDb
* Christopher Keyser on [IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0450899/?ref_=tt_ov_wr)
* [Chris Keyser at The Oxford Union Society vs. The Harvard Debate Council, 1982](https://youtu.be/mS2Zi6u95pg?si=L_R7ZdlXIH_dih_3&t=2283)
* [Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!](https://cottonbureau.com/people/scriptnotes-podcast)
* [Check out the Inneresting Newsletter](https://inneresting.substack.com/)
* [Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription](https://scriptnotes.supportingcast.fm/gifts) or [treat yourself to a premium subscription!](https://scriptnotes.supportingcast.fm/)
* Craig Mazin on [Threads](https://www.threads.net/@clmazin) and [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/clmazin/)
* John August on [Threads](https://www.threads.net/@johnaugust), [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/johnaugust)
* [John on Mastodon](https://mastodon.art/@johnaugust)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Rajesh Naroth ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))
* Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by [Matthew Chilelli](https://twitter.com/machelli).

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/614standard.mp3).

**UPDATE 10-15-23:** The transcript for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2023/scriptnotes-episode-614-storytelling-and-the-strike-transcript).

Speaking to the FTC about generative AI

October 4, 2023 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.

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