Today the Albanese Government announced a national framework for artificial intelligence, including the establishment of a new Office of AI and the development of Australian Standards for artificial intelligence.

On behalf of the Australian Directors’ Guild and the Australian Screen Directors Authorship Collecting Society (ASDACS), I welcome this news.

With artificial intelligence already changing the way Australians live, work, create, communicate and do business, a nationally coordinated approach is both significant and necessary. As Prime Minister Albanese said in his speech, we can’t turn back the clock. AI is already here. 

The challenge for Australia is how we ensure it works in our national interest, including the interests of directors and other creative professionals. A clear, connected framework is far preferable to fragmented rules that can’t properly protect Australians, provide certainty to industry, or deliver the best outcomes for our creative sector.

I am particularly encouraged by the Prime Minister’s commitment that Australian creators must retain ownership and control of their work, and that no company should be able to use Australian creative works to train AI systems without the creator’s control.

His statement that “anything less is theft” sends an important message that creative work is not free raw material for commercial exploitation.

The ADG has long argued that the use of creative works in AI systems must be governed by strong protections. Directors’ work, names, styles, credits, reputations and professional identities must not be used in AI systems without consent, transparency, attribution and fair remuneration.

Strong copyright protection can’t be optional, as we made clear in our detailed submission to the Australian Government’s National Cultural Policy review recently, alongside a series of recommendations on AI and the protection of Australian screen works.

That submission argued that AI policy must protect directors and other audiovisual authors through consent, transparency, attribution, metadata preservation and fair remuneration. It recognised that Australian screen works are valuable not just as finished cultural works, but as training, reference, performance and visual material.  Any future AI and copyright framework must ensure creators are not subjected to uncompensated extraction through another route.

The ADG has already undertaken substantial work on the implications of AI for Australian screen creators and has a responsibility to ensure directors’ voices are represented in future discussions on how AI is adopted and governed in Australia.

Our members want a future where Australia embraces innovation, but not at the expense of authorship, copyright or creative livelihoods.

We look forward to contributing to the next stage of this important work. We are ready to support the Albanese Government in developing an AI framework that protects Australian creators, strengthens the screen industry and ensures this technology works in the interests of all Australians.

Sophie Harper
CEO
Australian Directors’ Guild & ASDACS