Writers Guild East Inks Deal With AI-Shielding Software Company

The Writers Guild of America East has partnered with software company Cloak to help stop AI models from scanning writers’ scripts. The union says the service is intended to protect members’ work when they share it with agents, representatives and potential buyers, amid concerns that AI tools could use scripts without permission or generate summaries instead of human readers assessing them.

WGA East members will be able to use Cloak for free; non-members can access it for $10 if they register their scripts with the union. The software is designed to make documents difficult for most AI models to read while leaving them legible to people, and its patent is pending. The union has had AI protections in its contract since 2023 and also supports proposed New York legislation requiring disclosures on news stories created largely or entirely by generative AI.