The Australian Government’s Productivity Commission has initiated a consultation on the impacts of AI on Austrlian industries. The APDG submitted a response to one part of the consultation: ‘Pillar 3 – Harnessing data and digital technology’.

The submission was in the form of responses to set questions. Our responses drew on the AI survey we did with APDG members mid last year. The first question and response is included here and the full submission can be accessed via the red button below:

‘AI is increasingly being used in a range of contexts, including business and academic. The Productivity Commission is interested in better understanding how individuals and organisations are taking advantage of the AI tools already on the market.’ How are you currently using AI? Please provide details of the context and uses.

The following figures are summarised from APDG members surveyed in May 2024: 51.1% of designers are using or have used AI in their work.
Programs being used by designers are, in order of most-used: Mid Journey, Chat GPT, Photoshop, Adobe AI/Firefly, Dali-E. Other programs used by just one designer – PDF AI, MetaAI, Microsoft Designer, Leonardo, Vectorworks, Bing, Runway, Sumo, Discord.

50% of designers who are using AI use if for both creative and efficiency; 30.8% for efficiency and 19.2 for creative.

Forms of work being undertaken with AI are drafting, coding, illustration, research/searching, explanations/recommendations, brainstorming, conceptual “play”, concept, pre-vizualisation, scenic references in context, inspiration, minor infill – non creative vision, generating non-copyright artwork as set decoration, written work, cleaning up images/retouching and rendering, creating graphics and copy for graphics, mood boards, exploration of colour palettes and styles, writing extras briefs (repetitive tasks), completing costume illustrations, soundtracks. Some designers commented that they use AI to support a task that they are also using other tools and processes on.

Design uses summarised:
Reference imagery – 60.5%
Visual concepts – 60.5%
Graphics – 48.8%
Pre-visualisation – 44.2%
Converting 2D concepts to 3D – 14%
Construction drawings/design documentation – 11.6%
Costume/character drawings – 16.3%
Lighting design – 11.6%
Video or titles design – 4.7%

39.3% of designers have used AI within both contracted work and their own creative development process; 32.1% for creative development only, and 28.6% under contract only. The reason cited for use of AI are very diverse and include: generating designs for very specific scripted items, generating an actor’s stills shoot image without the actor, convenience and efficiency, generating non-copyright props graphics, training new students.

‘AI is a new technology so businesses and consumers are still learning how to properly use this technology. The technology itself is also still evolving to become more user friendly.’
Do you think there are opportunities to make greater use of AI in your work or home environment? What do you see as the biggest upsides?
Designers surveyed by the APDG identified the following potential benefits:

• Designers acknowledge the potential value of AI as a tool to streamline some labour-intensive tasks.
• Some designers are already using image to image genAI to augment their use of other digital tools, for example Photoshop generative fill, written tasks and where the task is essentially technical and creative discretion is not preeminent.
• Designers use AI as a research tool.
• Designers using genAI acknowledge the iterative process, working back and forward between their personal creative response and GenAI to create a work. They argue that their creative input is decisive in the final output, and that the human/artist cannot be supplanted.
• Some designers see the opportunities for genAI to open up new fields of design collaboration, for increased audience participation, for archiving ephemeral productions, and for entirely virtual productions, such as the ABBA show.

What challenges do you face in accessing or using AI? How can these challenges be overcome?

Challenges identified by APDG designers include:

• Designers’ work being used to train AI models without their permission
• Protection of original content makers (concept artists, graphic designers etc) when their work is being used within an AI generated design
• Lack of governance by managers of copyright of designs generated by designers using AI.
• Identifying chain of title of the originating designer
• Skilled and trained designers being displaced by managers believing AI can do their job, with insufficient understanding of the multiple benefits and advanced creative judgement of skilled designers. Industry estimates are that 25% of arts jobs are exposed to AI replacement.
• The potential for ‘AI hallucinations’ that produce nonsensical or inaccurate results
• Confusion and risk over the designer’s obligations if they use AI in their work, for example, do designers need to declare their use of AI? How does it affect their contract if they do not declare it? And what are the IP rights on the new work created using AI?

Challenges could be overcome, or at least minimized by:

• All designers need to be well informed on both the risks and the opportunities. Professional guilds and industry groups have a crucial role in informing our industry.
• Managers need to give designers the option to opt in or out of their work being ingested into AI datasets
• Designers need to be paid a fee to opt in for their designs to be used to train AI datasets
• Chain of title needs to be attached to original designers’ work being ingested into AI models.
• Copyright on original designers’ work being stringently managed and enforced by all AI models.
• Ownership of the technology by huge corporate entities with unproven ethical management frameworks is a key factor in determining the risks. (current owners of AI datasets include: Microsoft, Google, Disney, Meta, Yahoo, Flickr, Nvidia, Salesforce, Apple, Amazon)
• Australian federal laws are urgently needed to create a planning framework that protects the artists’ intellectual property and other rights, to limit the powers of the Tech giants and to govern their obligations to acknowledge the IP of all material that they source for GenAI uses.
• There are already mechanisms for AI to recognise copyright in material it uses, for example Shutterstock requires artists to opt in/out for use of their images, and if opting in and the image is used, copyright is retained. These mechanisms need to be adopted by all AI datasets.
• Managers need to draft contracts for designers that: identify if AI may or may not be used on a production; ensure transparency of AI use; acknowledge chain of title, copyright and moral rights for any AI datasets employed in the creation of designs, pay copyright fees when this is required; indemnify the designer for their use of AI if this has been requested

‘Across the community there are a range of concerns about the use and impact of AI. We want to build a better understanding of community concerns so that we can provide advice to government on what legislative changes should be prioritised. We are also interested in understanding what people think can and should reasonably be done about these risks.’
Do you have any concerns about using AI? What are the reasons for your answer? What can be done to lower your level of your concerns? Broader community concerns raised by designers include:

• The potential loss of creativity and homogenisation of designs
• Insensitivity to unique local factors such as first nations stories
• The overshadowing of human intuition and design expertise
• The loss of local cultural nuances and personal identities within design
• Cultural bias reflected and amplified in the data sets, for example language-based prompts that favour English and white male perspectives
• AI requires vast amounts of power to run the datasets, with consequent high carbon emissions
• AI models becoming increasingly self-referring (ie, less original content, more AI content in data sets)

By participating in the Productivity Commission consultation the guild hopes to inform fair and reasonable reforms that will protect designers’ copyright in their original design materials, and protect designers through their contractual conditions when they are working with AI.

If you are interested in the impact of AI on your work as a designer and would like to contribute to the discussion please get in touch with AI Taskforce coordinators Natalie Beak (screen) or (Stephen Curtis – Live Performance).

~ Stephen Curtis APDG