Andor creator refuses to publish scripts thanks to AI

Andor showrunner Tony Gilroy told Collider he has killed plans to publish the critically acclaimed show’s scripts, despite having the 1,500-page collection ready to go, due to fear that the material would become training fodder for artificial intelligence systems.

At an Emmy event in 2023, Gilroy announced plans to launch a free website featuring all of Andor’s scripts and concept art, journalist Jeff Goldsmith reported. “I wanted to do it. We put it together. It’s really cool. I’ve seen it, I loved it. AI is the reason we’re not,” Gilroy told Collider. “I mean, terribly sadly, it’s just too much of an X-ray and too easily absorbed. Why help the fucking robots anymore than you can? So, it was an ego thing. It was vanity that makes you want to do it, and the downside is real. So, vanity loses.”

Gilroy’s decision highlights growing concerns about artists’ work being used without permission to develop AI tools that could replace them — and a distaste for the technology in general. Christopher Nolan has called a lack of accountability in AI a “terrifying possibility,” and creator of Black Mirror Charlie Brooker called a ChatGPT-generated script “shit.”

At the same time, major studios haven’t shied away from AI partnerships. Last September, Lionsgate partnered with AI startup Runway to develop a machine learning model using content from its movie and TV catalog. A few weeks after that deal was announced, Reuters reported that Disney formed a new internal team to coordinate the company’s AI and mixed reality efforts. Disney CEO Bob Iger reportedly encouraged people to embrace AI’s ability to “make us better and tell better stories.”

‘Why help the fucking robots anymore than you can?’

Creatives’ concerns reached a boiling point in 2023 when Hollywood unions WGA and SAG-AFTRA staged a 148-day and 118-day strike respectively. Among their key demands were protections against AI-written scripts replacing human writers and safeguards preventing the creation of digital replicas of actors without their consent. Both the WGA and SAG-AFTRA successfully ratified contracts including several key AI-related protections — but both contracts expire over roughly the next year, and it’s likely they will have to renegotiate these terms. With union support, California Governor Gavin Newsom enacted two pieces of legislation last September that are designed to shield performers from unauthorized AI-generated digital replicas.

As AI models grow larger and more sophisticated, they require vast amounts of training data, making copyrighted materials like scripts and books prime targets. This has triggered a wave of legal challenges. The New York Times is suing OpenAI for copyright infringement, while a separate copyright lawsuit against the same company has been filed by a coalition of writers including Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin. Another group of authors has also filed a lawsuit against Anthropic, alleging the AI company trained models on a dataset called “The Pile,” which reportedly contains unauthorized copies of thousands of authors’ works. AI companies have typically argued that this training is legal fair use, but the debate remains unsettled as cases progress.

For now, as Gilroy puts it: why help the fucking robots more than you can?