Netflix’s $900,000 AI Job Listing Ruffles Feathers Amid Hollywood Writer Strikes

As the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), Screen Actors Guild (SAG), and Writers Guild of America (WGA) continue their efforts to protest the state of Hollywood, Netflix has garnered backlash for a new job listing.

The Intercept first spotted the call for a “machine learning product manager,” which was listed as being worth between US$300,000 to US$900,000 a year.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been a contentious point of debate in the current strike, with 87% of SAG writers reported to be earning less than US$26,000 a year. Hence, the displeasure at how much Netflix is offering for this particular job.

According to the job listing, the streaming service is looking for personnel to “increase the leverage of [its] machine learning platform,” which it says will be “the foundation for all of this innovation.”

This isn’t the first time Netflix has talked about the use of AI in its works, with a “machine learning” section on the company’s website alluding that the firm would be using the technology to “shape [its] catalogs of movies and TV shows” by “learning characteristics that make content successful” and “to optimize the production of original movies and TV shows.”

In addition, it appears the brand is also looking to hire a technical director for generative AI at its gaming studio, with the listing offering a salary of up to US$650,000 a year for the new position.

At the moment, the WGA Agreement still defines a writer as excluding any “corporate or impersonal purveyor,” such as AI, but it remains to be seen if human staff will be able to stave off the rise of the technology for long.

[via The Deadline and The Guardian, cover image via Rootstocks | Dreamstime.com]