Thousands of television and movie writers represented by the union Writers Guild of America (WGA) went on strike yesterday. It’s the first big Hollywood walkout since 2007, when some 12,000 members stopped working for 100 days.

Today’s strikers are demanding higher pay, plus minimum numbers of writers staffing writers’ rooms (called “mandatory staffing” by studios and “preserving the writers’ room” by the union). On a less familiar note, they’re demanding that use of artificial intelligence in the production of “literary materials”—scripts, treatments, outlines—be restricted, whether that A.I. is used to write works or to generate story ideas.

Though WGA writers make, on average, an eye-popping $250,000 a year, the structure of writers’ rooms is such that most creatives go through boom and bust times. Those checks that come in while working on a 10-episode TV season must also sustain them during long droughts.