Everyone Is Lying.

Including Me.

Last year I was at a dinner with showrunners and futurists. It began as a conversation about the future of storytelling. It ended in a shouting match — writers who were using AI on one side, writers who wanted nothing to do with it on the other. It got ugly fast. So when the subject comes up now, I parse words. I speak carefully. I match the room. I’m done doing that.

For context, I’ve been a WGA member for 20 years. I’ve run two shows. I’m currently in active development on pilots. I’m contextualizing because what I’m about to say is going to irritate some people, and you should know I have skin in this game.

The truth is, I quietly and effectively use AI as a tool — primarily for pitches and pitch materials. And most of the successful writers, producers, and executives you know are using it too. There are holdouts. But the uncomfortable reality is that usage is pervasive, and most people know it and are scared to name it. It’s time to name it. WGA negotiations are upon us and we cannot regulate what we don’t talk about.

The three objections

When I get into this conversation with creatives, the arguments against AI boil down to three things. Let me address them quickly before I get to what I actually want to say.

1. It’s not creativity. Creativity has always been about iterating on existing ideas — sometimes alone, sometimes with a partner, sometimes in a room. I’ve never been the writer who thought her own idea was automatically the best one. That’s why I love running shows. AI is a collaborator I can work with at 3am when I have a spark and can’t call anyone. I don’t consider it cheating when I call a colleague to bat around ideas. I don’t consider this cheating either.

2. It’s feeding your IP into an LLM. Correct. And 25 years of my intellectual property — everything I ever wrote for a studio or network, probably some ideas I merely sold — is already in every large language model without my permission. The studios and streamers have been feeding the AI monster for years. It’s my turn. Our turn. Playing by imaginary rules while the asymmetry stays in place isn’t getting any of us anywhere.

3. It’s not ethical. I’m a pragmatic socialist. I believe healthcare, housing, and food are human rights. And my checks come from corporations that are among the worst human rights offenders on earth. I am doing the best I can inside a structure I didn’t choose. For AI specifically, I’ve landed on Anthropic’s Claude as the least-bad major option — a company whose stated values appear most aligned with mine. That’s the best I can do, and I’m at peace with it for now.

What I actually do

The most important thing: I don’t let AI write for me. Pitches sell when they’re personal. Even as AI improves its ability to write, humans are going to crave humanity, and that won’t change. I’m not interested in what an AI thinks perimenopause feels like. It hasn’t experienced it. I am interested in AI aggregating experts and podcasts and articles by humans who have lived through the hellscape of sweating, itchy ears (WTF), and low moods and research it professionally.

That is: I am interested in a tool that does research and makes connections faster than I can make on my own right now.

Here’s the concrete version. Last fall I was pitching Viable Threat, a bioterrorism thriller. I had a comprehensive pitch, but I couldn’t “solve” the medical problem in the third act of the season — I knew where I wanted to end medically, but I couldn’t figure out how to treat the fictional pathogen. And while I have several talented doctor friends at my disposal, there’s a difference between actual medicine and TV medicine. I gave Claude the setup, the medical parameters, told it how I wanted the season to end, and let it do the heavy lifting on the theoretical TV medicine. Then I ran every bit of it through actual doctors who said in theory that would solve the fictional problem. It worked. It was a great pitch, and it sold.

That’s the pattern. I brain-dump everything — ideas often in no particular order, half-formed research, fragments — and instead of waiting until I have the energy to sit alone and organize it into coherence, AI does a lot of that work for me. Sometimes it makes connections I wouldn’t have made. Sometimes I have to throw the whole thing out. But I don’t have to wait until after I finish the parent-teacher conference, advise my latest mentee, or do the dishes anymore.

I also use it to pull images from ShotDeck for pitch decks — I give it my comps, my pitch in progress, a directive, and it creates a folder my assistant then uses to draft in Canva. I want to be clear: my assistant still has a job. I pay him out of pocket. My use of AI hasn’t taken anything from anyone. If anything it’s freed him from drudgery so he can do the work that actually requires taste.

The great democratization

One pilot sale in this business currently requires five to 10 great pitches — each a comprehensive 10-page document, fully researched, seasons of story broken, with an accompanying deck. If the streamers and studios are going to harvest every last bleeding creative drop from us, we need to find more blood to give. AI helps with that. Where I used to be able to research and develop a half-dozen pitches a year, I can now do ten. As a very wise Canadian once said: you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.

I’m a single mom, a showrunner, a professor, a mentor. Sometimes the only free time I have is at 1 am. Percolating on 10 ideas while someone else makes sure my house is running is a luxury I don’t have, and frankly, it’s a luxury most women don’t have. AI gives it back to me. That feels like democratization in a world that has always asked women to work harder with less.

And I genuinely believe AI is a democratization tool for everyone already in the industry, and everyone who wants to break in. We love to gatekeep in Hollywood. We like to think we’re the special few. But storytelling is human instinct, not a credential. AI is one more way for people who don’t live in LA, don’t have access to great teachers, don’t have time to dedicate themselves entirely to craft because they have to earn a living — to learn to write and present better. AI understands the basic tools of screenwriting. It can give a nascent writer cogent feedback on their ideas when they don’t have access to producers or agents or professors.

For those of you reading this thinking: No! Stop! Don’t tell people to use that horrible new technology! Fine. Write your own Substack. But here’s what I keep coming back to: the Luddites were right that machines take jobs. Bespoke work survived anyway. There is still a market for real craftsmanship in every trade, and there always will be. The craving for what’s human doesn’t go away, it intensifies. That’s not optimism. That’s history.

AI is a tool like any other tool. We need to start talking about how we use it, why we use it, and how to use it ethically. Or I promise you, the streamers, studios, and corporations are going to dictate that conversation for us. I hope the WGA is paying very close attention as they head into the next round of negotiations.

The industry is using it. The question is whether writers are the only ones who opt out on principle while everyone above us in the food chain doesn’t. I’d rather eat than be eaten.