FSE general delegate Denis Goulette travelled to Logroño, Spain, upon an invitation from the screenwriters’ guilds in Spain FAGA (Union de Guionistas) and ALMA. He gave a keynote at the 9th Encuentro de Guionistas, a major event for screenwriters in Spain organised by their guild.
In his speech, Denis Goulette invited attendees to consider the impact of AI on the diversity of voices and stories (“no friction, no fiction”), the existing and future legal and technical tools enabling authors to opt-out (“Consent is not about how much. It’s about yes or no.”), the current and foreseen economic model and authors’ remuneration through compensation mechanisms (“Are we measuring at the right scale ? €2,000 per year. Is that the right order of magnitude ?”). He is calling for an infrastructure (a global works identification database) and a strong coalition of authors’ organisations (“An algorithm cannot tell our story. Five million of us can.”)
“Something is happening, right now, in our profession. Something with very real consequences. Consequences for the next generation of screenwriters. Consequences for the diversity of the stories tomorrow will hear. And these consequences could follow two very different paths. Two paths that nothing yet forces us to choose between.” … The positive path exists. It is being built. It involves parliaments. It involves courts. It involves international organisations. It involves collecting societies. And it already involves coalitions that go far beyond each of our national guilds.”