Anthropic · OpenAI · The Guardian Technology
Netflix this month showed it leveraged AI in 300 of its 1,000 titles in 2026
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“It’s production specific,” said Ruth Fowler, a screenwriter and producer in Los Angeles.
Key facts
- Experienced and award-winning writers, directors and producers are being paid from $12 to $200 an hour to teach AI models the intricacies of their jobs, from writing a screenplay to devising
- Netflix this month revealed it used AI in 300 of its 1,000 titles in 2026, and directors including Ron Howard are starting to embrace the technology
- Across the US, jobs in motion picture and sound recording industries declined 28% from 450,000 in July 2022, the peak of the post-pandemic recovery, to 326,000 in May 2026, according to the Bureau
- Jody Wheeler, a 56-year-old screenwriter who has taught at the University of Southern California and has taken AI training work, was sanguine, having seen what he believes are the technology’s
Summary
H ollywood creatives are taking gig work to train AI models to replicate their skills in a bid to offset tightening earnings in a trend one compared to being “handed a shovel and asked to dig the grave of my profession”. Experienced and award-winning writers, directors and producers are being paid from $12 to $200 an hour to teach AI models the intricacies of their jobs, from writing a screenplay to devising a shooting schedule. With feelings ranging from fatalism to guilt, the creatives have signed up with some of the booming training agencies, which have contracts with the biggest AI companies including Anthropic and OpenAI, to pass on hard-won human skills in industries such as finance, health, law and social work. While they wait for entertainment industry work, they give notes on the AI systems’ attempts to do the tasks they would hope to be paid for themselves.