Artificial intelligence is a “danger for Quebec culture”, say the screenwriters

UPDATE DAY

The emergence of artificial intelligence poses a danger to Quebec culture, says the union that represents screenwriters who create stories in French for TV and cinema.

“Works without authors, that would give works without cultural coloring and without taste”, estimates the president of the Society of authors of radio, television and cinema of Quebec (SARTEC), Pauline Halpern.

< p>Like their striking American colleagues from the Writer's Guild Association, which have made artificial intelligence an issue in the renegotiation of their collective agreements, SARTEC members fear that producers will turn to applications like ChatGPT to obtain scripts at a fraction of the price.

“I'm afraid of losing this Quebec cultural originality, which is recognized around the world,” says Ms. Halpern, who sees in these new technologies “a danger” for our culture.

“We have been fighting for years to protect this culture, to protect our language, an iconoclastic thought, a very particular vision of the world that is expressed through our documentaries, our fictions. We have fantastic TV series that are the fruit of the imagination of authors. What will happen if it is replaced by artificial intelligence?”

She would refuse

Producer of television series to whom we must in particular Before the crash, Les pays d'en haut and Lies, Sophie Deschênes expresses a concern unlike that of SARTEC: that authors lacking inspiration are using artificial intelligence.

Sophie Deschênes

The President de SOVIMAGE assures that it would refuse to produce a scenario that would have been created using software like ChatGPT because of its public nature.

“I wouldn't take it because I don't have any guarantee that it won't be reused all over the place once it's in the system,” says Ms. Deschênes, citing fears related to plagiarism.

A useful law… for the moment

For the moment, SARTEC considers that there are obstacles to the use of the intelligence in screenwriting, the most important being the Copyright Act.

“As currently interpreted by case law, the law provides that for for a work to be protected by copyright, there must be some form of originality. This takes the form of human intervention. Currently, copyright does not protect creations born of artificial intelligence. At least that's the interpretation that I make of it and that of other specialists,” maintains Pauline Halpern.

The question of copyright also tickles Sophie Deschênes.

“If I use ChatGPT, do I own the rights? Someone owns this site,” she adds.

“Right now, there are a lot of unanswered questions.”