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Hollywood writers, directors and producers take $12 to $200-per-hour gigs training AI models
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Screenwriters, directors and producers are signing on with AI training agencies that contract with Anthropic and OpenAI, earning $12 to $200 per hour to teach models screenwriting, production planning and other craft tasks.
For engineers building AI products, this is the human-feedback supply chain that decides how models behave in specialised professional domains, and its pricing reflects how hard those experts are to recruit. The work exists because entertainment hiring has collapsed: LA shoot days fell 48% between 2021 and 2025, and US motion picture and sound recording employment dropped 28% from July 2022 to May 2026. That contraction is now feeding the same labs whose outputs are starting to replace the workers being recruited.
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Training agencies Mercor, Micro1 and Handshake connect Hollywood creatives with AI labs including Anthropic and OpenAI, paying $12 to $200 per hour for the work.
Tasks include reading scripts and emails to generate shoot schedules, building pitch decks, and producing visual speaker guides with accent labels for audio transcription.
LA shoot days fell 48% between 2021 and 2025 and US motion picture and sound recording jobs fell 28% from 450,000 in July 2022 to 326,000 in May 2026, the contraction now supplying the AI training market.
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