Writers Guild of America East Partners with Cloak to Block AI Training on Scripts
The Writers Guild of America, East announced a partnership on Tuesday to provide its members with free access to Cloak, a software program designed to render written files unreadable to artificial intelligence models while keeping them accessible to human readers. The encryption tool aims to protect writers from having their work ingested and utilized by AI systems without their explicit consent.
Under the agreement, WGAE members can add the service to their benefits program at no charge. Writers outside the union may also acquire Cloak protection by registering their scripts through the guild website for a fee of $10, in addition to standard registration costs.
Defending Creative Labor Against Automated Systems
The integration of generative artificial intelligence has introduced severe labor concerns across the entertainment industry, prompting guilds to pursue contractual safeguards. WGA East President Tom Fontana stated that the partnership expands the organization’s ongoing defense of creative workers against unauthorized exploitation.
Members don’t need to worry that their work will be used to train AI models after they send it to producers or agents — or simply that the product of weeks, months, or years of work will be reduced to an AI-generated summary of an email attachment,
Fontana said.
Larry J. Cohen, co-chair of the guild’s AI Task Force, noted that generative models rely on the false promise of making human labor obsolete. That’s why the guild is advocating for better protections against and awareness of the risks posed by AI — not just through our contracts, but through legislation and member education,
Cohen said.
WGA East Moves to Block AI Models from Training on Members’ Work with New Software Partner Cloak: ‘Give Agency Back to Writers’ https://t.co/dbTRcEQKrx
Cloak Provides Tools to Fight AI Content Ingestion
Cloak was founded in September 2025 by Rishi Ambavanekar and is backed by Andreessen Horowitz’s startup accelerator program Speedrun alongside the University of Pennsylvania. Ambavanekar stated that the software addresses an industry-wide vulnerability where internet-accessible content is routinely ingested by AI developers.
Until now, there hasn’t been a real technically-sound way to fight back against AI and determine how the content you create actually interacts with it,
Ambavanekar said.
An AI-proof copy could help keep a script from becoming training data or an AI-generated summary.WGA East members will get free access to Cloak, which its founder says is designed to give writers “agency” over how AI interacts with their work.Read more:… pic.twitter.com/BeF5WoAbNT
According to the startup’s website, recent tests indicate the encryption tool remains effective against major foundational models, including Anthropic’s Claude up to Fable 5.1, Google’s Gemini up to 3.8, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT up to GPT-6 Astra. The software also blocks automated document summaries generated by platforms such as Google Drive, Gmail, and Adobe Acrobat.
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