Why BC animators are breathing easier about AI

Artificial intelligence tools are starting to disrupt the job market.

A growing list of companies are laying off hundreds of workers, with some saying the emergence of AI is behind the cuts.

This fall, robotics company 1X launched humanoid automatons built to complete domestic work. The company’s CEO told the Wall Street Journal the robots were the first step toward a “beautiful future where we have an abundance of labour.”

And since tech giant OpenAI released its latest video generation tool, Sora 2, on Sept. 30, AI-generated video has flooded the internet.

Despite the tool’s popularity, Vancouver-based animator Emily Gossmann said she wasn’t worried.

“I am an optimist,” she said. “I have a lot of faith that my peers in the industry do good work, and I believe in our union and labour movement’s capacity to move the needle on regulation and to get better protections.”

That’s partly because the technology isn’t capable of matching the work of an animator. But it’s also because Gossmann, a senior steward with International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Local 938, fought hard for protections.

The collective agreements for more than 500 Vancouver animators shield employees from AI-fuelled plagiarism and require employers to consult unions before adopting AI tools.

While the provincial and federal governments waffle over AI regulation, entertainment workers’ contracts are setting a new standard of labour protections against the technology.

Enda Brophy, associate professor of communication at Simon Fraser University, said the protections are an important example of workers responding to artificial intelligence’s potential to displace workers.

“AI poses a considerable threat to workers across the economy, but especially to creative workers,” he said in an email. “Workers in the film sector have been at the cutting edge of responding to this threat.”

Entertainment workers fought hard for the protections. AI regulation was at the heart of the 2023 actors’ and writers’ strikes that shut down Hollywood for months. When the strikes ended that year, studios agreed not to use AI to write or rewrite scripts, and to ask for consent and compensate actors for use of AI replicas.

For animators, the win cleared the way to negotiate their own suite of AI protections.

In 2021, more than 200 employees at animation studio Titmouse Vancouver unionized with IATSE Local 938. In July, the union got a first contract for 300 workers at WildBrain Studios.

Both studios declined to comment for this story.

According to Gossmann, both collective agreements include AI protections. Animators are not held liable if an AI tool replicates another studio’s intellectual property without being prompted to.

The studios also agreed that work done by AI is not work done by a human, and so it cannot be assigned credit. Instead, the first animator who iterates, or revises, AI-generated materials gets full credit for the work that’s done.

Gossmann said this prevents studios from “downgrading” employees from animators who draw and create to employees who edit AI-generated work — a lower-paid position.

“To just be a revisionist and not have your hands in the creative process is very demoralizing,” she said. “You would be losing the opportunity to contribute and make something meaningful.”

The studio also agreed to consult the union before introducing AI tools to the work site.

For Gossmann, these protections mean AI is mostly used to speed up complex and mathematical processes, like animating particles or light, instead of replacing workers.

SFU’s Brophy said the protections were a good start for creative workers, as illustrators, copywriters and graphic design artists grapple with the threat of AI-driven job losses.

“These measures aren’t a silver bullet, but they do set a key precedent, which workers can point to and build upon,” he said.

Gossmann said studios have been hesitant to pick up AI tools while courts decide whether the technology has violated copyright laws. Studios also want to protect their own intellectual property from being used as training data.

“Adoption has been very slow,” Gossmann said. “It’s incorporated into visual effects workflows the same way that it was before the hype cycle kicked up… but not in this full replacement sort of way.”

Besides, she added, AI is not yet good enough to generate anything worth watching from scratch.

“I still am not seeing [AI] make something of a quality that could replace the artistry and the skill of our industry,” Gossmann said. “Touting it as something that is capable of doing that is very disrespectful to all the producers of our work and to the people that enjoy our work.”

Gossmann isn’t alone doubting the current capabilities of AI.

While generative artificial intelligence tools are starting to affect the job market, companies that hoped to replace them with artificial intelligence tools are quietly rehiring workers.

Still, workers in many industries are calling on government to regulate the technology before it destabilizes the job market.

In last year’s labour code review, unions including IATSE Local 938 urged the provincial government to require employers to consult them before adopting AI tools.

A panel of lawyers passed the recommendation up to the province, which at the time of publication was considering the panel’s report.

Vass Bednar, managing director of the policy think tank the Canadian SHIELD Institute, compared the threat of AI to that of offshore outsourcing.

When employers looked overseas for cheaper labour at the turn of the 21st century, Bednar said, the federal government responded with a concerted effort to keep labour in-country.

The response included investments in employee training and the creation of panels called Workforce Alliances, which brought the government into consultation with employers, unions and stakeholders about the new threat to labour.

But now, Bednar said, it’s not yet clear how — or if — the federal government plans to regulate AI to protect Canadian jobs.

“As some jobs sort of evaporate, or are explicitly automated away, we don’t really have a way to acknowledge this,” she said.

Bednar added the federal Liberal party’s budget included plans to invest heavily in AI to increase productivity.

“Maybe doing anything that’s kind of like a big tech accountability agenda is just poking the bear during this trade war [with the United States], and it’s not worth it,” she said. “Or it’s just too risky.”

— This story was originally published by The Tyee