Will AI upend white-collar work? Consider the Hollywood editor

For most of his four-plus decades in Hollywood, Mr Thomas R. Moore has worked as a picture editor on network television shows.

During a typical year, his work followed a pattern: He would spend about a week and a half distilling hours of footage into the first cut of an episode, then two to three weeks incorporating feedback from the director, producers and the network. When the episode was done, he would receive another episode’s worth of footage, and so on, until he and two other editors worked through the TV season.

This model, which typically pays picture editors US$125,000 (S$166,000) to US$200,000 a year, has mostly survived the shorter seasons of the streaming era, because editors can work on more than one show in a year. But with the advent of artificial intelligence (AI), Mr Moore fears that the job will soon be hollowed out.

“If AI could put together a credible version of the show for a first cut, it could eliminate one-third of our work days,” he said, citing technology like video-making software Sora as evidence that the shift is imminent. “We’ll become electronic gig workers.”

Mr Moore is not alone. In a dozen interviews with editors and other Hollywood craftspeople, almost all were worried that AI had either begun displacing them or could soon do so.

As it happens, these workers belong to a labour union, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), which can negotiate AI protections on their behalf, as actors’ and writers’ unions did during the 2023 strikes. Yet, their union recently approved a contract, by a large margin, that clears the way for studios to require employees to use the technology, just as Mr Moore and his colleagues have feared.

Some labour experts believe that the protections negotiated by the union, like regular meetings with studios on AI, may be the best it could do during an industrywide downturn. Union leaders have argued there is no way to prevent the use of AI in Hollywood crafts.

At a town hall meeting to discuss the contract – which covers not just editors but also thousands of make-up artists, prop makers, set designers, lighting technicians and camera operators – the union’s president advised members to make the best of it.

“If an AI job comes near your craft,” said IATSE president Matthew Loeb, members should embrace it and “make ourselves the experts”. In a recording shared with a reporter by a union member, Mr Loeb added: “Because that’s the way we’re going to keep our jurisdiction, keep people gainfully employed.”

But to Mr Moore and his fellow Cassandras, the failure to secure stronger AI protections bodes poorly not only for them, but also for workers across the country. “If a 70,000-member union like IATSE can’t protect workers, what does it mean for everybody else?” he said, referring to the number of craftspeople covered under two major contracts. “For society going forward?”

To fend off the threats, many IATSE members said, they hoped their union would negotiate protections similar to what Hollywood writers won in 2023 during their five-month strike: a prohibition on requiring writers to use AI programs like ChatGPT for scripts or outlines, along with strict rules on minimum staffing and duration, to limit potential job losses.

The new IATSE contract has neither of those measures. It says studios will not require workers to “provide prompts” that lead to the displacement of union members, but also says studios can “require employees to use any AI system”. Workers fear that studios will simply hire fewer workers for each project, knowing that AI will make them more productive.

Many of the contract’s AI provisions – like an agreement to negotiate in the future over the effect of AI – are procedural. They do not commit the studios to any concrete position, like preserving a certain number of jobs.

IATSE’s leadership has not been deaf to its members’ concerns about AI. “We realise that some classifications and some members may be impacted by this in a way not experienced before,” Ms Cathy Repola, executive director of the editors’ local, said at a town hall meeting to discuss the contract.

Unlike its most vocal members, however, the IATSE leadership appears to be more fatalistic about the possibility of restraining AI.

“We cannot defy it or attempt to prohibit its use,” Ms Repola said at the meeting. And while writers may have won stronger restraints on the use of AI, she added, IATSE craftspeople did not have the same leverage.

“If the entire bargaining unit of the IATSE said, ‘We’re going to refuse to use AI’”, the productions “wouldn’t be made here in this country”, Ms Repola said.

She and other leaders have also pointed out that unlike the writers’ contract, the IATSE contract covers dozens of different crafts, making sweeping prohibitions less practical.

Whether or not they accepted these arguments, members’ anxiety about AI did not appear to trigger a groundswell of opposition to the contract, which passed with more than 85 per cent support.

Still, the debate over AI remains a live one within the union. In mid-August, the Animation Guild, an IATSE local that negotiates separately from the larger union, will begin bargaining with studios over its next contract. In interviews, members of the guild’s bargaining committee said they hoped to improve on the AI provisions that the parent union negotiated.

“They’re really hard to look at, honestly,” said storyboard artist and writer Nora Meek, who serves on the committee.

Yet, some Animation Guild members worry that the parent union’s AI provisions may have made their task harder.

“That’s the challenge of pattern bargaining,” said Mr Brandon Jarratt, a member of the guild’s board and its AI task force, referring to the tendency of negotiations to set precedents for others in the same industry.

“The question comes down to, how much leverage and pressure can we put on stuff?” NYTIMES