SAA Summary: Impacts of Artificial Intelligence on the Creative Industries

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Canadian Parliament against a cloudy blue sky.

In September 2025, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage undertook a study on the impacts of artificial intelligence in the arts & culture sector. After community consultations, the Committee has shared their report Impacts of Artificial Intelligence on the Creative Industries, where they share the outcomes and direct quotations from those consultations, as well as thirteen recommendations for the government to move forward. 

The report includes a request for response from the government, as well as a supplementary report from Conservative members that effectively echoes the recommendations: Canada has, thus far, being successful in AI innovation and has the capacity to become a global leader in AI. Canada should look for ways to protect the arts & culture from the harmful aspects of AI, while embracing AI as a new reality that does hold benefits for the arts & culture sector, and Canada as a whole. 

The thirteen recommendations to the federal government can be, broadly, summarized as follows:

  • Apply the principles of the Copyright Act to AI content with the aim of protecting artists: ensuring the Act covers AI-generated content, demanding greater transparency from AI developers about source material and establishing a consent requirement for training AI models
  • Invest in Canadian-owned and governed public data infrastructure to allow artists to control their cultural data and research, and to develop and train Canadian AI-tools 
  • Require that AI-generated content be clearly identified across all sectors and mediums
  • Establish a framework to govern the identification of AI-generated content, and to distinguish between content generated solely by AI and content generated with the assistance of AI
  • Create a working group dedicated to cultural issues to examine the impacts of AI on arts & culture
  • Ensure that the Advisory Council on Artificial Intelligence include members from the cultural community
  • Take necessary measures to maintain Canada’s leadership in AI research and development; must explore programming to support cultural AI experimentation
  • Regulate the harmful outcomes of AI
  • Collaborate with experts and stakeholders to create a national strategy of AI literacy across all sectors and levels
  • Continue to support artistic and cultural production; develop and implement guidelines to ensure that existing and future cultural funds support human creative jobs and content
  • The Advisory Council must determine the threshold of human intervention required to grant copyright to AI-assisted creative work
  • Support the development of ethical and representative cultural data trusts to reduce algorithmic bias in AI tools
  • Establish funding programs for cultural workers from underrepresented communities to promote participation in development and governance of AI technologies in the creative sector