Thank you. I will try to be brief and provide a complement to the previous speeches so as not to go over the five minutes I have been given.
My expertise is not in culture, but in AI, or artificial intelligence. I chose to help organizations and unions that defend culture in Quebec and Canada because I am in a good position to know how threatened these industries are. Beyond the industries themselves, it is artists and creators in particular who are the main subject of our discussion today.
Non-artists and studios can simulate works and market them using generative AI and, in particular, agentive AI. For example, there has been a lot of talk about the fake band The Velvet Sundown, whose music has garnered millions of plays on Spotify. It is absolutely not a band, in fact. Nor is it a group that used an artificial intelligence system to produce music. It is simply the product of an individual who simulated fictional members and generated music based on training data that was itself plundered by harvesting the web.
What is more, there are now synthetic studios that create fake actresses and actors, such as Tilly Norwood from the Particle6 studio. These studios are essentially creating a lie, namely the idea that there is such a thing as synthetic actresses or actors. Again, these are just unfounded claims. Of course, these things cause confusion among the public and represent unfair competition for artists and creators, who spend a large part of their lives developing their talent, studying their art and thereby investing in our culture.
In my opinion, the government has a critical responsibility to preserve the existence of arts and culture by protecting citizen artists against theft and exploitation of their works and against unfair competition from artificial intelligence, which already exists and will continue to grow.
For very simple reasons, there is a difference between artists and professions such as mine or those of doctors, lawyers, engineers, or electricians: these professions are protected by law. If, for example, a doctor uses ChatGPT to analyze a patient's medical condition, they remain ultimately responsible for making a diagnosis.
However, generative AI is capable of creating fake works and synthetic productions. Unlike many other professions, there are no professional standards guaranteeing the exclusivity of artistic production. As a result, artists are left to their own devices, and it is the market that dictates, based on consumer preferences, who will truly be considered an artist and who will not. Of course, many economic players have understood this. It will therefore be very easy to replace living artists with synthetic “artists,” in other words, synthetically generated products that are not artists. This will contribute to further destabilizing artistic professions.
I would therefore like to speak to the committee about the importance of labelling synthetic products in Canada. There is no legislative framework or bill on this subject, but it would be possible to create a regulatory framework very quickly to ensure that synthetic products are clearly identified. This will enable the public to at least make an informed judgment about music and audiovisual content generated by artificial intelligence systems. They will be aware that these productions are not works of art and do not meet the basic requirements of artistic or cultural production. Of course, one could also argue that such regulation, which would aim to ensure transparency in cultural production, would also serve as a safeguard against misinformation originating from a multitude of actors capable of using these generative artificial intelligence systems.
I would like the committee to understand that, even though I am not an artist, I could start working tomorrow morning in all kinds of fields such as graphic illustration, audiovisual media, or music, without mastering any of the codes of these professions, but simply by being able to use generative artificial intelligence systems. I could set up a complete studio to promote the development of my own film and television productions and flood platforms with this content. All it would cost me is the subscription fees for non-Canadian computer server and algorithmic system companies, all located in the United States.
This is a real threat to sovereignty, not just cultural sovereignty, but Canadian sovereignty as a whole. If elected officials cannot protect citizens from data theft and public deception, who can?