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Leo Faber
AI and the defence of creative authorship

For years, we told ourselves creativity would be the last thing artificial intelligence could take. Now, almost overnight, it feels like the first.

This week, the Albanese government ruled out creating a copyright exception for AI training. For many in the arts, it marked a long-awaited acknowledgement that creative work deserves consent and protection in the age of AI, that it is not mere raw material for machine learning.

Meanwhile, global artists such as FKA Twigs have appeared before the United States Senate, warning that their voices are being used “without ... consent”.

Both moments point to the same truth: culture is at a turning point. What we choose to protect now will define what remains human in the creative economy.

I’ve spent 25 years immersed in creative culture – in edit suites, dusty outback locations, theatre basements, virtual landscapes and broadcast boardrooms. I’ve seen ideas born out of chaos, nurtured by uncertainty, sharpened by failure and turned into meaning.

In all of this, we have always cared about who made the culture in front of us, why they made it, and what truth they sought in the act of creation.

That reverence for the maker – the messy, complex, human origin of creative work – is precisely what is under threat. AI-generated content floods our timelines, fills our ears and seeps quietly into the cultural bloodstream. It’s not just the volume of this material; it is the feeling that we, as creators and audiences, are being written out of the conversation, edged aside by something impressive, efficient and indifferent to meaning.

This is not an argument against AI. It’s a call to defend the preservation of human authorship. AI, as deployed today, is not neutral. It is shaped by commercial imperatives and a logic of optimisation. What it optimises for – speed, cost, virality – is not what we, as humans, value most – context, experience, risk, accountability.

I’ve lived that tension firsthand. In 2015, I co-founded the experimental arts collective BADFAITH with artist Shaun Gladwell, becoming one of the early pioneers of virtual-reality storytelling. We showcased work at festivals such as Sundance and Cannes, exploring how technology could deepen human experience rather than replace it.

Those projects taught me that innovation and ethics must evolve together – that technology only serves art when it amplifies the human spirit. That lesson feels more urgent now than it ever has.

The government’s decision to block an AI-training exception is a crucial start. It acknowledges that creators are not data and consent matters. Yet if copyright law is the floor of protection, we still need a ceiling of trust – a way for artists and audiences to see, at a glance, what is truly human-made.

The treasurer’s recent Economic Reform Roundtable treated AI mainly as an efficiency tool for business productivity. Yet the most profound disruptions are cultural. The government’s ruling is a welcome defence of creators’ rights, but it will not rebuild audience trust or help people navigate a world where synthetic and human creativity are indistinguishable.

To make those choices meaningful, we need a simple, visible signal: a certification mark for human-made work.

We already certify things that matter – the provenance of our food, the sustainability of our timber, the ethics of our trade. Why not certify the most human thing of all: creativity?

A painting, a film, a novel, a song – each is shaped by biography, intuition and failure. That’s why we love artists, why we turn them into icons. AI can generate artefacts but not origin stories. It can imitate style but not intention.

Without a clear marker of provenance, audiences risk becoming numb to the difference, however. In time, we could forget what it feels like to be moved by the audacity of a human voice. Certification is not about nostalgia – it’s about clarity, agency and choice.

The creative industries are not ornamental. According to Creative Australia, cultural and creative activity contributes more than $100 billion to gross domestic product and employs more than 600,000 Australians. Every film, album, design and festival fuels education, tourism and reputation. Creativity is infrastructure for meaning and belonging. To lose the credibility of the “human hand” in this ecosystem would be to weaken one of Australia’s few global advantages – authenticity.

Globally, similar debates are playing out. The European Union’s AI Act came into force last year. Japan has allowed AI to train freely on copyrighted work. The US is exploring watermarking standards. Australia now sits at a crossroads – small enough to move quickly yet large enough to lead ethically. By establishing a voluntary human-made certification model, we could export not just culture but principle.

Imagine a decentralised system where creators can verify their process as 100 per cent AI-free and human-led. A musician submits their project files and session logs; a writer uploads draft histories; a filmmaker provides edit timelines or production notes. Panels of peers and technical reviewers confirm authenticity – not through surveillance but transparency.

Verified works receive a human-made certification mark and a public ledger entry. Blockchain – once used to inflate speculation – can here serve cultural integrity: a tamper-proof record linking a work to its author and process. Similar ledgers already trace diamonds (Everledger) and timestamp creative content (Po.et).

In the arts, this could become a living archive of authorship, protecting provenance while making human creativity visible in a sea of algorithmic output. Universities, arts councils and cultural archives could act as trusted verifiers. Over time, a shared global standard could emerge, supported by both industry and government.

Importantly, this would not exclude collaboration with AI. Works that use AI transparently could be labelled “human-led”, allowing nuance rather than purity tests. What matters is disclosure and consent, not prohibition.

This registry is not a panopticon but a commons, a record of artistic intent and integrity. In an age of deepfakes and synthetic media, it could offer a rare form of trust.

Australia’s decision to reject the AI-training exception places it at the forefront of global cultural policy. The next step is to build a model others can follow – one that protects rights and fosters trust.

To that end, my colleagues and I are forming the Authentica Institute, a new foundation to convene artists, publishers, technologists, archivists, educators and policymakers, to co-design this human-made certification standard. It will be a global movement with grassroots support from anyone who cares about the future of creativity and about preserving the value behind the author, the auteur, the artist.

Our aim is not to wall off technology but to distinguish the human within it, giving creators agency and audiences clarity. Verification will never be perfect, but it can be credible. Timestamped files, change histories, creative journals and witness statements form a mosaic of proof. As with organic certification, disputes and appeals will occur – that’s part of its legitimacy. What matters is participation.

We live in a post-truth world where deepfakes and synthetic voices blur perception. The attention economy, once merely commercial, now shapes belief. In this climate, human-made creativity is an anchor – a reminder that not everything is generated to manipulate or optimise.

A certification mark could help redirect attention towards authenticity: a badge on Spotify signalling a song was composed by a person; a film-festival category for verified human-made works; grants and fellowships that reward process transparency. The point is not to slow technology but to elevate intention.

Participation in this movement should feel like a statement of care, a decision to contribute to a digital ecology where provenance, process and personhood remain visible.

The deeper question is not about tools but meaning. Creativity is how a culture tells the truth about itself. Every song, painting or film carries traces of its maker’s world – the land they live on, the language they dream in, the failures that shaped them.

When that lineage disappears into machine-trained mimicry, something sacred dissolves. The right to make – and to be known as the maker – is a human right worth defending.

The Albanese government’s copyright decision and the Senate’s renewed focus on creative rights mark an encouraging shift. What’s needed now is infrastructure: a way to verify, discover and celebrate human authorship across every medium.

We need a way to preserve authorship as a shared social contract. What’s at stake is larger than an industry or a set of laws. It is, quite simply, the light that makes culture human. Let us act, before the blur becomes permanent.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on October 31, 2025 as "The humans who fought AI".

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