Safrea’s Chairperson, Nathi Gule will be joining the Writers Guild of South Africa in discussing this controversial topic.
Following the successful WGSA first workshop on AI in September, which was a call to leadership and solidarity towards AI regulation with WGSA member, Zunaid Mansoor, you are invited to join us for another online session in which the urgency to become aware of the loss to our livelihoods, and the need to support regulation, will be emphasised and amplified by the addition of expert voices.
The widespread adoption of AI apps and models in the creative industries, particularly screenwriting and book publishing, offers a solution to a problem that did not exist, and in so doing, poses an existential crisis for writers and content creators, lowering our expectations of what we will write, read and watch, diminishing the sacred act of writing into a menial, routine task which anyone can do without having learned, practised or even intended.
Global thought leaders like Oprah Winfrey, Yuval Noah Harari, Bill Gates, Tambay Obenson, and a cohort of AI technologists and developers themselves, have equally warned of the certainty of job displacement en masse and role obsolescence. Its impact on all forms of writing has been described as fundamentally dehumanising, and as a social weapon of mass destruction.
The Writers Guild of America East and West, along with the International Affiliation of Writers Guilds – of which the WGSA is a member – have perceived this impact as a violation of human rights, a threat to democracy, resulting in strike action, and international lobbying for the protection of writers’ IP through formal regulation. For now, whilst U.S. screenwriters are protected by their Guild’s procurement of a Minimum Basic Agreement, and screenwriters and other professionals in the European Union are protected by the new AI Act, South African screenwriters and content creators remain unprotected, naked and maximally vulnerable to exploitation, plagiarism, and outright theft.
Let us stand up together in peace and with courage, for the craft and business of writing – the most powerful force of nature there is, second only, perhaps, to love
Session details:
This session will be hosted by Zunaid Mansoor, interviewing various guests.
Date: 26 October 2024
Time: 10h00 – 12h00 SAST
Safrea members attend free. Non-members pay R100. See RSVP form for payment details
