Industry Minister: trust in AI undermined by unauthorised uses of creators’ works

May 29, 2024

In a speech to the Australian Financial Review Artificial Intelligence (AI) Summit (here) the Minister for Industry and Science (Ed Husic) talked about building trust in AI in the Australian community to boost adoption of AI in Australia.

He referred to current issues that are eroding trust in AI, including the unauthorised use of creators’ works:

I want more businesses seeing the benefits of AI.

But a key handbrake on adoption is a low level of community trust that AI is safe to use.

For each story about a business using AI to automate its logistics operations, or in precision farming, there’s an example of a business doing the wrong thing.

Concerns about deepfakes – of politicians, senior executives, celebrities, even friends and family – are leading people to doubt what’s real and what’s not.

So too are examples of AI systems giving dangerously incorrect advice.

And there’s growing concern from a whole range of artists whose work is being ripped off and repurposed without their consent.

Clearly there is serious work to be done to get community trust back.

Soon we’ll spell out the details on options for mandatory guardrails for developers and deployers of AI in high-risk settings, to ensure their products are safe to use.

And we’ll seek your views on the form those guardrails should take.

Copyright Agency’s submission on Adopting AI is Australia is available here. Other submissions relating to AI are here.