The deal is not without its quandaries. Enforcement is an overriding one, says Daniel Gervais, a professor of intellectual property and AI law at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Figuring that out will likely set another precedent. Gervais agrees that this deal gives writers some leverage with studios, but it might not be able to stop an AI company, which may or not be based in the US, from scraping their work.
There are also questions around who carries the burden to reveal when AI has contributed some part of a script. Studios could argue that they took a script from one writer and gave it to another for rewrites without knowledge that the text had AI-generated components. “As a lawyer, I’m thinking, ‘OK, so what does that mean? How do you prove that? What’s the burden? And how realistic is that?’”hinted at by the terms of the WGA deal is one in which machines and humans work together.
The impact of the WGA’s deal on SAG-AFRTA’s negotiations is important. Actors have stronger protections in the form of—also known as name, image, and likeness rights—yet intense concerns remain about synthetic “actors” being built from the material of actors’ past performances.