Meredith Stiehm

Meredith Stiehm has been a fixture in Hollywood for decades. Among the Emmy Award-winning writer and producer's credits: the hugely-popular Showtime series Homeland.

But last year, Stiehm took on a different role: protecting Hollywood writers against the incursion of artificial intelligence.

Stiehm, who served as president of Writers Guild of America West since 2021—including the 148-day period last year when the WGA went on strike—helped fight for precedent-setting protections for writers against AI that will last through May 2026. Under the current contract, production companies can’t use AI as source material, can’t require writers to use AI software and must disclose if material given to writers uses or incorporates AI.

Outside of Hollywood, Stiehm has also been advocating for lawmakers to regulate AI. She endorsed a 2024 bill introduced by Rep. Adam Schiff that would require any company that has made, or is making, generative AI tools to comply with copyright law.

The issue with generative AI, Stiehm believes, is quite straightforward: it takes and uses writers’ work without attribution or compensation. “AI does not have lived experience,” she says. “It doesn't have a human experience. It doesn't have a unique point of view. Anything that AI generates that tries to offer that is based on actual human work.”

In an address to lawmakers in Washington, D.C. last year, during the strike, Stiehm put the terms of the issue starkly: “In writing, that’s called plagiarism. In legal terms, it's intellectual property theft.”