Jack Thorne warns AI is 'a shrinking tool' for writers
Writers' Guild of Great Britain President Jack Thorne delivered a stark warning to the UK Government on Sunday, saying the next five years of AI policy will "define what the next hundred looks like for every writer in this country." Speaking at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall during an event on Authorship in the Age of AI, Thorne made a direct appeal to new Prime Minister Andy Burnham, a former Culture Secretary, to intervene before the profession faces what he called "partial destruction."
Thorne did not mince words about the Government's current posture. "The Government is staring at AI with eyes wider than Bugs Bunny," he said. "It doesn't know what it is, it doesn't know whether to run towards it or run away. It doesn't know whether it's the future of our country's economy or a massive destructive force."
The threat to working writers
Thorne described large language models as being "in an arms race with each other," trained on writers' work scraped without consent or payment - a practice he said breaches existing UK copyright law. Tech companies have spent millions on second-hand books to feed these models, and numerous copyright cases against big tech firms are now working through US courts.
He also pointed to a problem closer to home: writers using AI to cheat. Thorne said he had spoken with executives, studio heads, and fellow writers who confirmed they knew people were using prompts to generate scripts. "If publishers, studios, streamers, can point to the writer as the problem, that gives them the excuse to behave however they'd like with content," he said. "'We have to use AI because you guys are'."
Thorne predicted sustained "incursions" into the profession over the next five years: script reading replaced by animatics, routine use of AI to generate ideas, the death of the rewrite, and potentially the replacement of the writer themselves. The biggest casualty, he argued, would be the development of future writers.
What writers lose when AI substitutes for investment
Thorne used Michaela Coel's career as a case study. Her show Chewing Gum Dreams moved from fringe London theatre to the National Theatre to Channel 4's E4, where it became Chewing Gum, which led the BBC to commission I May Destroy You. Every stage required investment from actors, directors, designers, producers, and enthusiasts.
"If a Michaela Coel script can be digitally created, then that investment becomes less interesting," Thorne said. "If Michaela Coel can be scraped and those scrapes can be used to create shadows of her work, can be used to create a Michaela Coel substitute, then the investment in the next Michaela Coel becomes less likely."
The economics are straightforward. "AI, in its current form, is a shrinking tool," he said. "And it doesn't need to be. We do not wish to be shrunk."
Five demands for Government action
Thorne laid out five proposals from his perspective "as a practitioner."
Full transparency. Big tech companies "steal, but because they don't have to declare where they stole from, the stealing goes unpunished," he said. Thorne called for mandatory data sets in which developers publish audited summaries of every input that led to their outputs. The Government's AI Labelling Taskforce is due to announce findings this autumn.
Make training data cost money. "These costs need to be large enough that generating ideas through machines isn't necessarily cheaper than generating ideas through humans," Thorne said.
Change fraud legislation. Thorne drew a clear line: using AI to check spelling and sense should remain legal, but "if you use AI to generate content and you do not declare it as such then that is fraud." He said the change was necessary "to protect the most vulnerable."
Prohibit AI impersonation. Thorne described asking Gemini to write a script in the style of Craig Mazin. "It did and it wasn't good but there were aspects of his writing I recognised," he said. He also asked ChatGPT to write a Channel 4 pitch in his own style. "Disappointingly that was pretty good, but that may say more about my writing and choices than AI. This should be prohibited."
Create a Copyright Institute. Just as the Government has an AI Security Institute, Thorne wants a regulatory body that monitors AI expansion and suggests intervention when necessary - including changes to the BBC Charter, support for lower budget dramas, and regional theatre new writing programmes.
Thorne concluded with a direct challenge to Burnham. "This requires Government leadership. In fact, it requires our Government to take global leadership," he said. "Surely - surely - this sector is worth, to quote our new Prime Minister, some political capital."
Why this matters for writers
Thorne's speech frames the next five years as a window that will determine whether writing remains a viable career. The specific proposals - mandatory training data disclosure, fraud law changes, and a Copyright Institute - give writers concrete policy positions to push for with their unions and MPs. For individual writers, the immediate practical takeaway is Thorne's fraud distinction: using AI for spelling and grammar checks is fine, but generating content without declaring it crosses a line that could, if left unenforced, give studios and publishers cover to devalue human work. Writers looking to understand how AI tools affect their craft can find targeted guidance through AI for Writers training resources, and those working in television and film specifically should review AI for Scriptwriters to understand what these tools can and cannot do.
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