How the Hollywood Strikes Became the First Major Labor Conflict Triggered by Generative Artificial Intelligence

For decades, we were told that routine work would be replaced by machines, while creativity would remain the exclusive domain of human beings.

It was confidently assumed that machines would take over all of humanity’s tedious work, leaving us, the humans, with the beautiful part—creation, imagination, storytelling. Writing, acting, art—until recently, these were regarded as the final stronghold. Writers and actors enjoyed the particular peace of mind of those who believed themselves untouchable. How could a machine write a story? How could it perform a love scene?

To everyone’s great surprise, the first major large-scale labor conflict caused by artificial intelligence did not erupt in a warehouse or a call center, but precisely where no one expected it—in Hollywood, the heart of America’s creative industry.

Those who first sounded the alarm were not the most vulnerable people in the industry, but some of the highest-paid professionals in the United States. Screenwriters and actors earning considerable incomes were the first to become frightened and take to the streets, warning the world that generative artificial intelligence was eroding their earnings, while in other parts of the economy, far more poorly paid workers were already losing their jobs because of the same technologies, almost without anyone noticing.

The Strikes That Shook Hollywood

It all began in May 2023, when the screenwriters’ union, the Writers Guild of America, ran out of patience and went on strike. Less than two months later, in July of the same year, the actors’ union, SAG-AFTRA, joined them in a movement so well coordinated that the American film industry was effectively left unable to breathe for months. The writers ended their strike on September 27, after 148 days; the actors, somewhat more stubbornly, continued until November 9, for 118 days—the longest actors’ strike in Hollywood history.

The causes were, of course, varied—pay, streaming residuals, working conditions—but something new had entered the usual list of demands, something that had never appeared in earlier negotiations: generative artificial intelligence.

The screenwriters had a very concrete—and, it must be said, entirely justified—fear: that a studio, in its pursuit of profit, would allow a machine to write the first draft of a screenplay, then bring in a human writer merely to “correct” or “improve” the text, paying them, naturally, as a simple editor rather than as an author. The difference between the two situations is not minor—a screenwriter paid for a rewrite earns far less than one paid for an original screenplay. The union therefore obtained explicit guarantees: AI cannot be recognized as a “screenwriter” and cannot write or rewrite literary material itself, while the profession retained the right to challenge in court the use of existing screenplays to train these algorithms without the authors’ consent.

Actors, in turn, had an equally justified fear, though of a different kind: that once their faces and voices had been digitally scanned, they could be used indefinitely, in all manner of ways, without explicit consent for each use and without further payment. Background performers were in the worst position—paid for a single day of filming, they might later discover that their digital “double” was appearing in productions in which they had never actually participated.

The final agreement required studios to obtain an actor’s explicit consent before creating a digital replica and to compensate the actor for every subsequent use.

As a result of the protests, clear contractual provisions governing the use of generative artificial intelligence were introduced into collective bargaining agreements for the first time—a legal and institutional precedent for creative industries around the world.

Why AI Became a Problem for Creative Professions

For years, public discussion about the future of work was built around an implicit hierarchy: at the bottom of the pyramid were “mechanical” jobs, supposedly easy to replace; at the top were creative professions, believed to be protected by an invisible barrier—human imagination, sensitivity, and originality. Reports on workplace automation over the previous decade discussed drivers, cashiers, and call-center operators. Almost no one placed screenwriters or actors on the same lists of endangered occupations.

The Hollywood strikes of 2023 showed how mistaken this hierarchy was. Generative artificial intelligence did not need to “understand” art in order to produce something sufficiently similar to it to pose a genuine threat to a job. A studio only needed to generate a first draft acceptable enough to reduce a writer to the role of a poorly paid editor. A technology only needed to scan a background performer’s face once in order never to require that person on set again.

AI does not need to be as good as a human artist. It only needs to be “good enough” and much cheaper—and where studio budgets, deadlines, and profits are concerned, the difference in quality matters less than many of us would like to believe.

The Hollywood Paradox

Those who took to the streets in 2023 were not the people most economically exposed in America. An established Hollywood screenwriter and a leading actor rank among the highest-paid professionals in the entire American economy—many of them earning from a single project more than an ordinary person earns in a full year. Their fear concerned the loss of part of an already more-than-satisfactory income, not the fear of being unable to pay the rent. For many of them, the issue was not immediate survival, but the protection of a profession and an income level built over time.

At the same time, in other parts of the economy—call centers, translation services, data entry, technical support, and even segments of accounting and legal work—far more poorly paid employees were already losing their jobs or watching their duties shrink and be reorganized because of the same artificial-intelligence tools. The difference was that they had no powerful union behind them, no public stage from which to voice their dissatisfaction, and no ability to transform silent suffering into a visible conflict. It was not those most threatened by poverty who managed to bring an entire industry to a halt and extract written guarantees, but precisely those who had the most to lose in absolute terms—and, perhaps just as importantly, the greatest power to fight for it.

The fact that Hollywood became the first stage for this confrontation does not mean that it faced the greatest economic danger in the country. There are probably other professions in which AI has bitten just as deeply—or even more deeply—into people’s earnings and jobs, without generating public attention. The difference was that the American creative industry already possessed the instruments needed to transform a vague fear into a conflict visible to everyone: powerful unions; perfect timing, since the contracts renegotiated every three years happened to come up for renewal just as generative AI exploded into public awareness in 2023; and an issue that could easily inspire public empathy. A digital double performing in place of a well-known star without that person’s consent is easy to imagine and condemn morally—unlike the quieter and less cinematic loss of a poorly paid administrative job.

In other words, Hollywood gained visibility not because it suffered the most, but because it had the strongest and best-organized voice. This raises a less comfortable question: how many other professions, more poorly paid and less vocal, are silently enduring the same pressures, with no one there to hear them?

Beyond Hollywood

Tensions surrounding AI did not suddenly appear in 2023. As early as 2022, visual artists, illustrators, and freelance translators had complained about generative tools that imitated, with disturbing accuracy, the styles they had spent a lifetime developing—often after being trained on their own work without permission. Unlike Hollywood screenwriters and actors, most of these creative workers were freelancers, without a powerful union behind them and often with far more modest incomes. Their discontent flowed into online protests and copyright lawsuits—some of which remain unresolved—rather than into a strike capable of shutting down an entire industry for months.

The Hollywood strikes were not an isolated incident, but the highest-paid and most visible tip of a much broader and quieter phenomenon: the automation of dispersed, individual labor without collective representation. A screenwriter under a studio contract could halt an industry. A freelance illustrator, a literary translator, or a call-center operator does not possess the same power—and very probably experiences exactly the same pressures, only without reporters at the door and without a reserve income to soften the blow.

Three Years Later

Looking back three years after those strikes, it is clear that they neither stopped artificial intelligence nor prevented its integration into the film industry. AI has since become a routine tool for research, translation, previsualization, visual effects, and even the development of preliminary screenplay drafts. At the same time, however, the most dramatic fears of 2023 did not materialize: screenwriters were not replaced by algorithms, and actors did not disappear from film sets in favor of digital replicas. Instead, the use of AI became a permanent subject of negotiation between studios and unions, with the rules established in 2023 remaining the starting point for all subsequent discussions.

What made the Hollywood strikes of 2023 exceptional was not that creativity was more endangered there than elsewhere, but that, for the first time, an organized labor conflict—with an actual strike and a signed collective bargaining agreement—was carried through to its conclusion by people who had the resources and negotiating power required to do so. The legal precedent created at the time still matters today.

But the question remains: what will happen to everyone else—those without powerful unions and without bargaining power—when artificial intelligence begins to transform their jobs radically?

Sources Consulted
Writers Guild of America, “Artificial Intelligence”—official guide to the AI provisions in the 2023 Memorandum of Agreement
SAG-AFTRA, “2023 TV/Theatrical Contracts” and “Artificial Intelligence Resources”—official agreement documents