Photos courtesy of DM@X

This year’s Digital Media at the Crossroads (DM@X) brought together media regulators, creative unions, industry professionals, reporters, and scholars. Over the course of two days and 18 panels, key concerns at the forefront of the Canadian media industry were discussed. Major topics included global streamers, the Online Streaming Act, the increasing importance of audience development, diversity and representation regulation, the future of Canadian public and private broadcasting, and—of course—the threat of AI. CLCF members Daphne Idiz and Mary Elizabeth Luka attended. Some of the presentations are sampled below.

A roundtable about “The Impact of AI on the Canadian Creative Sectors” composed of speakers from the Canadian screen industries to unpack current and future risks around generative AI (genAI) in the creative sector. The panel was moderated by Dave Forget (Directors Guild of Canada) and included speakers John Rowley (Screen Composers Guild of Canada), Neal McDougall (Writers Guild of Canada), and Stephen Stohn (Canadian Media Producers Association). 

Throughout the discussion, the key concerns cited by the representatives broadly fit into two major areas. On the input side, speakers denounced the way in which genAI models are trained, scraping copyrighted materials without consent, license, or compensation. On the output side, speakers cited apprehensions around authorship and copyright in genAI produced works, fears of replacement for human creators, and the lack of diversity in AI (though the panel itself was also lacking in this department). The big takeaway according to the panellists: Canadian creators feel they are facing a “revolutionary force,” negotiating a complex terrain of policy, collective action, and big tech companies.

The importance of regulatory responses to AI were underscored in the discussion. However, these came hand-in-hand with challenges. Where the big tech motto is “move fast and break things,” the CRTC is concerned with “future-proof” policy that is flexible and sustainable. Harmonizing these two timelines is something creators today might not have the luxury to wait for, as evidenced by the 2023 strikes by our southern neighbours. 

In terms of Canadian regulation, the speakers highlighted the need to address AI concerns in the Copyright Act and in the forthcoming definition of Canadian content in the Broadcasting Act. Specifically, that “author” be clearly defined as human and that only human-created work be covered by copyright and eligible for funding. Yet even these seemingly straightforward demands raised a host of questions: What about works “co-created” by humans using genAI? How can creators be safeguarded against “copyright laundering” where a human creator is merely brought on to edit AI generated work? Or, perhaps most provocatively, “how much human is human enough”?

From the talk, familiar discourse around AI emerged. On the most alarmist side, a picture was painted of our dystopian sci-fi future. Here, AI was framed as an unavoidable “disruptive force” which will lead to “mass unemployment” within the next decade. Cue the terminator metaphor. Similarly, the humanist man versus machine dichotomy was emphasized by speakers, stressing that AI doesn’t have human traits and can’t make up new genres. Though this optimism was short-lived, as one speaker put it “AI doesn’t have a soul but it can fake it very well.” Finally, the discussion of AI as a “tool” for creators was brought up. In this context, speakers grappled with conceptualizing how AI might fit into their practices: “it’s not really a hammer, more of an extension of our minds.”

The panel ended with some audience questions—”“Thank you for the talk and the grim forecast”—around the slow pace of legislation and the purpose of creating AI in the first place. Though insightful, the conversation felt incomplete—missing perspectives from a diversity of lived experiences that could have provided deeper, more nuanced insights into the impact of genAI on the creative industries.

The culminating panel for the conference included several influential and thoughtful contributions, resulting in a hopeful end to the sessions. Jennifer Podemski, whose Shine Network is one of the CLCF partners, kicked off this panel to talk about experience as a producer, actor, writer, and efforts to create safe spaces for Indigenous women in the business, all of which continues unabated. Mike Omelus, Executive Director of Content and Strategy at APTN, described current and anticipated offerings at the channel, noting that language preservation continues to be of crucial importance in an age where AI voraciously scrapes and generates dominant ideas and languages. Jean Ouellet, Manager, Indigenous Broadcasting Policy at the CRTC sketched out ways in which the CRTC is guided by the ten principles of self-determination and self-governance, and aims to incorporate a community-led engagement approach. Kerry Swanson, CEO of the Indigenous Screen Office, reiterated the fundamental pillars of the ISO (funding, partnerships, and advocacy) as crucial for the AI era, including as the home of on-screen protocols, which is often taught in our home department of Arts, Culture, and Media at UTSC.

See the full DM@X 2025 conference program here.