Anonymous Strike Diary: The ‘Well-Known Creator’ Can’t Get AI to Write a Decent Protest Sign

Anonymous
·6 min read

This is part of a series of accounts of the strike from Hollywood writers at different levels in their careers. The diarists have been granted anonymity to encourage candor. You can read previous entries by ‘Well-Known Creator’ and others here.

My daughter had her tonsils removed yesterday. (Thank you, WGA health insurance!) We were very worried, as while the surgery is relatively low risk, it is still surgery and anesthesia is involved. Everything turned out fine and aside from having to wake her up every four hours to take “yucky” pain meds, the night after went fairly smoothly.

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Then this morning I went to wake her up… and she had a completely different voice.

I had to force myself not to look horribly alarmed as my weirdo daughter with the raspy, Kathleen Turner-with-allergies lisp started chatting in some other kid’s voice. She sounded like, well, like any other 5-year-old girl. It’s been four hours now and my wife and I are still freaking out. Her voice! Her weird little voice is gone! Replaced by something… dare I say, generic.

Now the term “voice,” spoken in reference to Hollywood writers, is as ubiquitous and hard to define as “likability” and “net profits.” Executives are constantly looking for writers with a unique “voice.” Indeed, when I’m reading scripts to staff a room, I ask the covering agents not to send samples that mimic the show I’m hiring for, but rather to send samples “that best represent a pure distillation of [your] clients’ voice.” I’m not exactly sure what I mean, but it sounds smart and usually gets me material from which I get a true sense of who the writer is. What they have to say. How they see the world. What matters to them. Their voice.

On the picket line, I’ve been thinking and talking a lot about AI. The DGA’s proposed deal, which I complained about last week, puts in place certain limited guardrails against AI taking DGA jobs — though some have argued it not only doesn’t go far enough, but the AMPTP’s wording is alarmingly cagey, specifying not “AI” but weirdly only “GAI,” meaning generative artificial intelligence. And whatever you call AI, it is so clearly in its infancy that it is critical we achieve broad protection against what it might become in the future. But the notion that AI could ever actually replace writers is up for debate. Because if you’ve played with it at all, it is clear AI doesn’t have it. It doesn’t have a voice.

ChatGPT, the most widely available large language model AI chatbot, sounds like everyone else, in that it sounds like no one. Like my 5-year-old (sob). This might not matter if you’re generating clickbait articles, but it’s useless when trying to tell compelling, surprising, unique stories, or write sharp, funny or even human-sounding dialogue. And when it comes to jokes, ChatGPT is atrocious. Humor is all about specificity and point of view; it’s about voice. And since we’re not allowed to write stories or dialogue right now, we’re pretty much left with writing anonymous articles for the trades, and jokes on picket signs. And while sure, I have seen some pretty hacky picket signs out there, there are also some truly phenomenal ones. 

So, as an experiment, I decided to try to employ ChatGPT like I would a writer in my room, and asked it to write some picket sign jokes. Here are the best from its first try:

“Our creativity doesn’t need a script, it needs a raise!” 

“WGA: Writing Genius Anarchists!” 

“This picket line has more plot twists than a soap opera!” 

“Our words can cut deeper than a paper cut!” 

“You can’t spell ‘power’ without ‘WGA’!” 

Okay, bizarrely awful. Like, kind of beautifully inept. But this was a first shot. And like any newbie writer, it might just be trying to find its feet. Maybe it had never been in a room and was intimidated. A palms sweaty, mom’s spaghetti sorta thing. It takes a while for writers to merge their voice with the voice of the room, so as I would do with any new writer, I started drilling down, offering suggestions, nudging it to try harder, to dig deeper. I even fed it some good picket sign jokes as examples. And then I tried again.

Here’s what it came up with:

“Writers on Strike: We’ll turn your script into a toilet paper roll!”

“WGA: We script our revenge with dark humor and plot twists!”

“Our words can shatter your glass ceilings like bad punchlines!”

“Our sarcasm is so sharp, it could cut through the fabric of reality!” 

Newbie or not, if any of my writers were to make any of the above pitches, all discussion would immediately stop just so we could figure out what the fuck was wrong with this person. Were they a spy from the network? Did they need to use the bathroom? Were they having a stroke? But like any good boss, I kept trying. After we stopped for 45 minutes to order lunch, I asked the new writer to try again, but this time make the jokes “punchier”:

“Out of ink, but not out of fight!”

“We’re striking words, not matches!”

“Writers unite! We’re striking for words that ignite!” 

Fucking hell? At this point all of the other writers were passing vicious notes back and forth and quietly plotting to take over the show from me. But I had to keep trying. What adjustment might nudge the writer towards what I want?

“Meaner,” I told the new writer.

“No scripts, no mercy! We’re ready to unleash our sarcastic wrath!” 

“We’re striking so hard, even Google can’t come up with a script to fix it!” 

“Our strike is like a rejected rom-com — it’ll leave you wanting more!” 

Food came but I threw a Rubik’s cube at the bag-laden PA who quickly scurried off. No lunch until we figure this out!

“Try more ‘combative.’”

“Step into the ring, Hollywood! We’re striking with knockout words!” 

“We’re striking until our paychecks have more zeros than a bad horror movie sequel!” 

“We’re picketing for better wages and coffee that doesn’t taste like rejection!” 

“We’re unleashing the fury of our pens in this all-out war on unfair treatment!” 

“We’re armed with sarcasm, wit, and determination. The studios won’t know what hit them!” 

Fuuuuck. Okay, “Silly.”

“This strike is powered by an army of talking squirrels and dancing unicorns!” 

“Our strike is as silly as a penguin wearing a fez on roller skates!” 

“Step aside, seriousness! The writer’s strike is all about silly shenanigans!” 

“Our strike is like a clown car of comedy, packed with hilarious demands!” 

I grew desperate. “Now, try it in the voice of a cynical, middle-aged writer with young children who just wants to get back to writing.”

“Once a writer, now a professional protester. Life’s ironic, isn’t it?” 

“Missing: my writing desk. Reward offered for its safe return!” 

“Trade lights, camera, action for lights, signs, frustration. Bring back the words!” 

I was about to give up, fire my entire staff, and quit the business, but then, at 6 p.m., when half the staff was asleep and the rest were spite-eating all the cookies in the office kitchen, it spat out this:

“Dear networks, please end this strike. My kids are tired of seeing me at home!” 

I sat up. Okay! I mean, it’s awful and as hacky as the lamest joke on a quickly-cancelled UPN sitcom, but at least it kind of makes sense and has a whiff of “humor.”

I finally let the room go and watched out the window as they all spit on my car and then drove home to their angry spouses, before then emailing their resumés to Michael Schur.

Look, obviously ChatGPT will get better. It will eventually be able to understand nuance and context, will be more able to adjust and follow directions and make creative choices. But at the end of the day, it will still feel like someone who watched a bunch of television and film, absorbed the general structure and mechanics, but has absolutely nothing to say. It cares about nothing. Is obsessed with nothing.

Never fell in love. Never got its heart broken. Has no personal stories to contribute. No axes to grind. No pettiness or jealousy or kinks or general vindictiveness to work out on the page. It has no voice. And as a result, it can’t even craft one decent joke about how shitty and unfair our corporate overlords are being, which is just about the easiest thing to do right now. But during the above experiment, whenever I asked for “mean,” ChatGPT would say something like, “It’s important to approach any strike or protest with respect, professionalism and a focus on positive change.” And all the inept, unfunny, voiceless writing aside, if you can’t be mean, you might as well stick to listicles.

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