WGA East Strikes Deal With Cloak to Safeguard Screenplays from AI Scraping

The Writers Guild of America East has partnered with Cloak, a tool designed to make screenplays harder for AI models to scrape and use for training. The deal matters because it gives writers a way to protect scripts they share with producers or agents, amid continuing disputes over whether AI companies can train on creative work without permission.

WGA East members will get free access to Cloak; others can pay $10 after registering a script with the guild. Cloak says its software preserves script formatting while resisting scraping by most AI models. The partnership is part of the union’s wider AI work, following its creation of an AI task force, a campaign for human involvement in creative work, and AI-related demands during its 148-day 2023 strike.