The Writers Guild of America ratified a new contract that injects $321 million into the guild's health plan, updates streaming residual formulas, and includes explicit language governing how writers' work can be used in AI training - the first major entertainment guild contract to tackle that question in concrete terms.
The AI provisions require studios and producers to disclose when AI tools are used in script development and prohibit using AI-generated content to replace covered writers. More significant for the long term: the contract addresses training data directly, establishing that scripts and treatments cannot be fed into AI systems without authorization under the agreement's licensing framework.
The SAG-AFTRA deal in 2023 covered AI likeness and performance replication for actors. This WGA contract goes further by setting terms for what studios can do with written material when building or fine-tuning AI models - fine-tuning being the process of training a model further on specific data to improve its performance on particular tasks. For companies building AI scriptwriting tools or entertainment production platforms, this precedent matters. Other creative guilds are watching, and similar language will likely appear in upcoming negotiations with directors, composers, and game writers.
Whether these terms are enforceable against AI companies that aren't party to the contract is a separate legal question. But the language now exists as a baseline that future negotiations will reference.
The $321 million health plan contribution addresses a funding shortfall that threatened benefits for thousands of working writers. Residuals for streaming platforms also received updates, with revised payment formulas for content appearing on subscription services like Netflix and Amazon Prime.