Evidence of meeting #9 for Canadian Heritage in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was content.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Kevin Waugh Conservative Saskatoon South, SK
As you know, it takes a lot of capital to compete worldwide, or even in North America. What's your experience with this?
Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, BILI Social
Do you mean in terms of raising capital?
Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, BILI Social
To launch the business, we did a modest raise. We worked with a number of high-net-worth individuals to raise some money and have continued to raise more since then. I've gone public through a reverse takeover. It's a process we've just begun. For us, raising capital was critical to make lots of the investments in our business before we had revenue to drive that. It's very critical. We started looking within Canada, within North America and globally for some of these capital sources.
Conservative
Kevin Waugh Conservative Saskatoon South, SK
You talked about athletes, so you're with the CFL union. You're with the NHL alumni.
I'm going to give Jessica Campbell a salute here—assistant coach with Seattle Kraken, first female, comes from Saskatchewan. Her mom, Monique Campbell, is a University of Saskatchewan graduate.
An American company could give a damn about the Canadian CFL and NHLPA, and you've taken this on, so let's just talk about this. Why would you deal with the union from the CFL and the NHL alumni? I just need a little context on why someone would take this on, because they're afterthoughts, both of them—they played the game and now they've left the game. Maybe just comment on that.
Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, BILI Social
It seems like you know Jessica Campbell very well. I think for context we had Jessica Campbell, along with a couple of PWHL players, in a campaign for a client of ours for a young girls' U11 team from the east coast who were wanting to have the experience of hearing from Jessica Campbell and some PWHL players.
In terms of athletes, as I mentioned in the context of creativity, our creative community is creators, social media influencers. If you think about social media influencers, they go everywhere from a few thousand followers to a million-plus. Even within the context of major sports leagues, whether it's the NHL alumni or current players in the CFL, there's also a wide range there from small audiences to large audiences.
As I said, our mission is to connect brands and social media influencers, and athletes are also influencers. The reason it's interesting for us to work with organizations like this and become the exclusive social commerce partner of these organizations is that with the CFL union, for example, we help the players beyond the field of play. The union is there to support the players. We help the players earn beyond the field of play, from brand partnerships, selling their merchandise, etc.
That aligns very closely with our mission. How do we connect brands with influencers, but also how do we enable influencers and creators to become mini-retailers and mini-brands themselves? Working on deals with the union and the alumni helps us do that.
Conservative
Kevin Waugh Conservative Saskatoon South, SK
I have 20 seconds. Everyone in this country is talking about Colonel Sanders behind home plate in game two.
How would you, as a former advertising agency, take that, with six million viewers in Canada, outside into AI now to use it on social media? Everyone has seen the game, and everyone saw the colonel behind home plate. How would you take that and use it on social media now?
Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, BILI Social
Well, that's being accelerated across social media already. There were broadcasts and people are seeing it, sharing it, etc. That type of content very likely was made for social sharing and social acceleration in terms of AI.
Liberal
Liberal
Zoe Royer Liberal Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
To our witnesses, all nine of you, we know that AI can expand what creators do at lightning speed. It's also an incredible tool. But now technology is taking over thinking for us. Data shows that when AI gives an answer up front, most people, or more than 60%, don't click through to the original sources. A study from McGill shows that habitual GPS use—I think most of us do this—actually weakens spatial memory. U of C research links early screen time to measurable impacts on child development. Essentially, we are outsourcing functions that used to live within our own brains.
Beyond the science, there is something profoundly human about the joy of creation—a teen drawing on their own; or an adult writing a story, composing music or building something new. That spark of imagination is fundamental to who we are as humans. But AI doesn't create. It scrapes. It repackages what humans have already made.
My question, which I'll present to Wyatt, is this: If we increasingly let AI imagine and create for us, what happens to human originality and innovation over time?
Founder and Executive Director, AI Governance and Safety Canada
First of all, I think I'm less worried about creators than I am about lawyers or accountants or whatever, because regardless of what happens with AI, people are going to keep making music and keep making movies. AI can't take away from us the joy of doing that. What it can do is take away the market share.
On the example you gave about the website, of people just using the summaries, those summaries are going to keep getting better. Certainly, they're flawed right now, but there's this world in which basically a lot of these issues that we have right now, where AI has to scrape a whole bunch of human content in order to be able to produce its own thing, are temporary problems. In the future, it won't need our data. The heartbreaking thing is that it won't even need us to outperform us.
As we're looking at this in terms of a transition phase, going back to your original question, I think we can continue to encourage human beings to create content. As long as we can make sure they at least have access to the platforms where people consume content and encourage people to consume content, I'm less worried about the creators in terms of that. What I am worried about is their business model. I think their business model and pretty much every other industry's business model is about to be significantly disrupted, if not washed out.
Liberal
Zoe Royer Liberal Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC
That's amazing. Thank you very much, Wyatt.
Maybe I'll pose this question to Jonathan and Étienne, who are online.
How should Canada respond to protect and strengthen the creative spark, especially in young people, in the francophone population and in other groups whose voices might be drowned out?
Full Professor, Chaire de recherche du Québec sur l’intelligence artificielle et le numérique francophones
There are a couple of points here. First, there is this assumption I've been hearing for the last 20 minutes or half an hour that we in Canada fight above our weight. That is totally, totally not true.
Bloc
Martin Champoux Bloc Drummond, QC
Madam Chair, I have a point of order.
There seem to be issues with the interpretation. On the one hand, there may be microphones not on mute in the room or something disrupting the sound quality.
On the other hand, I would like to invite the speakers to speak a little more slowly. Sometimes it is extremely difficult for the interpreters to keep up, as the pace is extremely fast. I would very much appreciate it if they would take into account the fact that we work in both official languages.
Bloc
Martin Champoux Bloc Drummond, QC
We can start over. I will let you know if the interpreter signals to us.
Full Professor, Chaire de recherche du Québec sur l’intelligence artificielle et le numérique francophones
I am trying it again in English, and I will try to be a little bit slower.
There are a couple of points. The first point is that it's a little bit misleading to say that Canadian industry and especially the creative industry is fighting above our weight. This is not a bit misleading; it is profoundly misleading. In terms of international comparison, there is no such thing as the Canadian advantage. That's a problem.
There's another issue in relation to considering sports as part of Canadian culture. I think it's also misleading. As the bulk of your question goes, I think a cultural policy made in Canada would have to start again from the fundamental mission of Canadian Heritage, which is to defend and promote Canadian culture. That is not a technological industry issue at first; it is an issue that starts with cultural creators, artists and different communities across the country. If you start with that and try to assume what the capacity would be in five to 10 years, for these people to make a living out of culture, we need to have producers of culture who will be able to keep this alive. That is the issue.
The person who just spoke was totally right in saying that it is an economic issue with regard to the fact jobs are vanishing. Cultural creators will have to find other revenue streams. That will become an issue in terms of the capacity of culture to just stay alive. With no actual strategy, we're running the risk of just pretending that we're fixing this thing while the ship is sinking.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Lisa Hepfner
Thank you very much.
Mr. Champoux, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.
Bloc
Martin Champoux Bloc Drummond, QC
Mr. Dubois, earlier you talked about protected content being plagiarized. Those are harsh but really realistic terms. Can you expand on that a bit? I think this is an extremely concerning issue for artists and content creators in Quebec and Canada.
Executive Director, Société des auteurs et autrices de radio, télévision et cinéma
Thank you for the opportunity to clarify that.
First, I want to make it clear that, fundamentally, technology does not frighten us. Artists have always been able to adapt and use new tools to work better, perform better and be more creative. The problem is that the main large language models are trained in a very opaque manner when it comes to certain open access content, of course, but also when it comes to a lot of protected content. We've seen it in literature. We see it in the audiovisual sector. We obviously see it in music. That's what's most urgent for us today.
Bloc
Martin Champoux Bloc Drummond, QC
We recently heard that cultural stakeholders weren't sufficiently consulted to raise these issues.
Do you think the cultural sector is being consulted enough? Is it at the discussion tables when it comes to policy or research on this subject? There are two researchers here who have done a lot of work on this. However, in general, do you think consultation is lacking?
Executive Director, Société des auteurs et autrices de radio, télévision et cinéma
Exchanges and dialogue are lacking. Some positions are very firm. At the moment, there is no constructive space to establish a dialogue and common thoughts.
Bloc
Martin Champoux Bloc Drummond, QC
What concerns do creators in the audiovisual sector have about the arrival of artificial intelligence?
Do they see this as an interesting new tool for them to use? Or do they say that something's going on and that it could cause them to lose their jobs?
Executive Director, Société des auteurs et autrices de radio, télévision et cinéma
I believe it would be the second option of your multiple-choice question.
In short, the threat is disappearance. Creators are afraid of work disappearing, even though 90% of them are prepared to work with artificial intelligence tools to improve productivity. We're asking for a break right now, because we're in the process of adopting tools too quickly without being sure of their traceability and transparency, and without knowing whether information is coming from the right source and under the right conditions.
Bloc
Martin Champoux Bloc Drummond, QC
Mr. Strati, you represent the Canadian Media Producers Association. Are producers aware of the fact that creators are facing this new threat to their profession?
Do you team up with content creators and with the entire television production industry?
How do you perceive this danger that's looming over content creators?