There's something deeply unsettling about watching a machine learn to dream. Yet that's exactly what's happening in Hollywood writers' rooms across Los Angeles, where artificial intelligence has begun its quiet colonization of the most fundamentally human art form: storytelling. The question isn't whether AI can write a scene—it already can. The question is what happens to the screenwriters when their primary skill becomes editing a machine's imagination.
The creative industries are experiencing what can only be described as a digital reckoning. According to forthcoming Brookings research, writers and authors are 100% exposed to generative AI—the highest possible exposure score. This isn't just disruption; it's an existential threat wrapped in the language of efficiency and innovation.
The New Assembly Line of Dreams
Hollywood has always been a factory for dreams, but now it's becoming a factory in the most literal sense. AI screenwriting tools like Squibler, Sudowrite, and Pickaxe promise to generate "movie-quality scripts" in minutes, transform basic drafts into complete screenplays, and even create detailed character profiles and plot outlines. The pitch is seductive: why spend weeks crafting dialogue when an algorithm can produce a "B-minus version" that writers can simply "spruce up"?
This represents a fundamental shift in how creative work is conceptualized. With Pickaxe, writers can generate written scenes by describing their plots and characters in a text box. Gioia says screenwriters have told them it's a helpful tool "to do 80 percent of the work for them, like get around writer's block, generate a B-minus version of a scene or conversation that they can then spruce up."
The language here is revealing. Writers are being repositioned as editors, quality controllers on an assembly line of algorithmic creativity. The "80 percent" figure should terrify anyone who believes in the craft of writing, because it suggests that the bulk of creative work—the exploration, the discovery, the happy accidents that make stories human—can be outsourced to machines.
What makes this shift particularly devastating is how it's dismantling the traditional pathways into the profession. Goffman also pointed out the potential loss of the apprenticeship system that has been an integral part of training new series writers and showrunners. This form of mentorship is rapidly eroding as AI increasingly takes over tasks typically performed by entry-level writers and assistants.
This isn't just about replacing established writers—it's about preventing the next generation from ever becoming writers at all. Entry-level positions, script coverage, rewrites, and polishing work have traditionally been how aspiring screenwriters learned their craft. When AI can handle these tasks, the ladder to creative careers gets pulled up behind those who've already climbed it.
The implications extend far beyond individual careers. This decline is further exacerbated by hybrid and work-from-home practices. The industry has yet to find a replacement to the important process needed to develop on-the-job training and preserve the pool of experienced writing talent.
Perhaps most chilling is how AI is accelerating the "gig-ification" of creative work. A big concern for me is AI generating ideas and scripts, and writers only being hired for polishing and rewrites. We won't be writers anymore... When you have AI creating all the material, what is to say the companies will need you for those 20 weeks to just rewrite stories? They might just need you for two weeks, or a couple of days. Instead of a weekly guarantee for pay, they'll now give you a day rate, which is probably a third of what you would get paid for a regular script…Basically, we just become gig workers in an industry where we were an instrumental part of creating the product. It's like the Uber-fication of Hollywood.
This transformation from creator to contractor represents a fundamental devaluation of creative labor. Writers who once developed characters, built worlds, and crafted emotional journeys are being relegated to quality control, fixing whatever the machines produce. It's creative labor stripped of its creative core.
The most profound loss may be the most intangible: authenticity. AI trains on existing datasets, but it has no perspective of its own, nor does it have personal experiences on which to draw. These are the most fundamental tools writers can use to imbue their work with humanity, rather than a facsimile of it.
This hits at the heart of what makes storytelling matter. Great screenwriters like Billy Ray, Paul Schrader, Bong Joon Ho, and Todd Haynes don't just arrange plot points—they channel lived experience, cultural perspective, and emotional truth through their work. When I asked ChatGPT a question I felt was relevant to the bodyguard premise, "Have you ever cared for someone?"—a theme any human writer would hopefully consider—I received a revelatory answer: "Please upgrade to enjoy unlimited access."
The machine doesn't understand the question because it has never experienced care, loss, hope, or any of the emotions that drive compelling storytelling. It can simulate these experiences by recombining existing examples, but simulation is not creation.
The seductive promise of AI screenwriting tools is productivity—write faster, overcome writer's block, iterate more quickly. But this productivity comes at a cost that's difficult to quantify: the loss of the creative process itself. The brilliance of writing comes from the exploration of writing every word, and in writing, be it novels or screenwriting, every word is crucial. If you have even a single word that isn't in service of the story, it shouldn't be there. With Story Engine, none of those words are in service to the story. They are AI-generated fillers from the ideas you gave.
This observation cuts to the core of creative work. Writing isn't just about producing text—it's about the thinking, feeling, and discovering that happens during the writing process. When AI handles the "heavy lifting" of actually writing words, it removes the writer from the very process that generates insight, emotional truth, and creative breakthrough.
The 2023 Writers Guild of America strike secured important protections against AI use, establishing that screenwriters can use artificial intelligence when providing writing services, but only with the consent of production partners, and they cannot be compelled to use AI. This represents a significant victory for creative workers, but it may prove to be a temporary one.
The problem is that while writers can't be forced to use AI, they can't prevent others from using it either. If AI tools become sophisticated enough to produce consistently usable content, economic pressure will inevitably favor writers who embrace these technologies. The choice becomes adapt or become irrelevant.
What's at stake extends beyond individual careers to the broader cultural ecosystem. The reason why I wanted to be a writer is to craft stories that other people can see themselves in. In a lot of the shows that I loved coming up, a lot of the characters didn't look like me.
This personal motivation—the desire to create representation, to tell stories that haven't been told, to bring new perspectives to screen—is precisely what AI cannot provide. Algorithms trained on existing content will inevitably reproduce existing biases and perspectives, creating a feedback loop that reinforces rather than challenges cultural norms.
The AI revolution in screenwriting isn't just about technology—it's about what we value in human expression. Are stories just content to be consumed, or are they expressions of human experience that deserve to be crafted with intention, care, and authenticity?
The trajectory seems clear: AI will become increasingly sophisticated, production companies will face pressure to use more efficient tools, and human writers will find themselves competing with machines that never sleep, never demand healthcare, and never ask for residuals. The question isn't whether this future is coming—it's whether we'll recognize what we've lost when it arrives.
For an industry built on the premise that stories matter, the rise of AI screenwriting represents a fundamental philosophical crisis. If the creation of those stories can be outsourced to machines, what exactly are we saying about the value of human creativity itself?
The script doctors are in, and they're performing surgery on Hollywood's soul. The prognosis remains uncertain, but one thing is clear: the patient will never be the same.
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