The Heritage committee's new AI report is framed as a way to protect Canadian creators.

[mgeist@mas.to]

The Heritage committee's new AI report is framed as a way to protect Canadian creators. But its leading recommendation of opt-in consent for all training data would do the opposite, making Canada an outlier and reducing Canadian content in AI models.
https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2026/04/ai-without-canada-why-the-heritage-committees-ai-report-could-lead-to-less-canadian-content-in-the-training-data/

[chris@mstdn.chrisalemany.ca]

@mgeist so you are advocating that Canadian creators should just give away their work to AI aggregators for free?

Do you believe it should be legal for me to record a movie in a movie theatre and sell it to people in the street as well?

[alessandro@cosocial.ca]

@chris

Yeah, this seems like advocating to engage in a protection racket, except it's "exposure" instead of "protection".

@mgeist

[chris@mstdn.chrisalemany.ca]

@alessandro @mgeist

“Over seven meetings, the committee heard from 43 witnesses, the overwhelming majority of whom represented collective rights organizations (Access Copyright, Copibec, SOCAN, Music Canada, Music Publishers Canada), cultural industry associations (CMPA, Directors Guild, Writers Guild, Union des Artistes), and cultural policy advocates. The handful of witnesses who offered a different perspective on copyright and competitiveness, including AI researchers, the entertainment software sector, and those who cautioned against overregulation, were cited in the report but functionally absent from its recommendations. “

Oh no! The government might be listening to people worried about our rights as humans, workers, creators!!
*sarc

I am actually shocked the Canadian government might recommend something that *does not* immediately advantage the so called “rights” of corporations to be unregulated.

[driusan@doomscroller.social]

@chris@mstdn.chrisalemany.ca @mgeist@mas.to I believe it should be legal for you to record a movie in a movie theatre and sell it to people in the street more than I believe it should be legal for an AI to be trained on your writing/art/etc without your explicit opt-in consent.