Canada’s four main arts and design universities are asking Ottawa for $10 million for workforce training that would help artists and creative organizations use artificial intelligence in their work. 

The National Network of Canadian Art and Design Universities, known as UAD4, made the request in a submission to the federal government ahead of its budget next week. The group—which includes OCAD University in Toronto, Vancouver’s Emily Carr University of Art + Design, NSCAD University in Halifax and Alberta University of the Arts in Calgary—wants the money to create a national program that would serve creative professionals and small businesses. 

The proposal highlights a conflict at the heart of creative industries grappling with where—or whether—AI belongs in their work. 

Ana Serrano, OCAD’s president and vice-chancellor, said the money would support workforce training for the whole creative sector and not just students and faculty at the universities. 

The schools would develop training programs for organizations that typically employ artists, designers and other creative professionals. Many are small businesses with just a handful of employees, Serrano said. The training would help improve their productivity by equipping them with AI tools that can take over mundane and repetitive administrative jobs—what she called the “drudgery.”

The training could also help artists use AI in more creative aspects of their work, Serrano said, such as teaching audiovisual producers to use the technology to plan scenes, develop concepts and assist with visual effects and editing. 

In their submission, the universities said freelancers, sole proprietors and gig workers in the creative industry often lack the access to employer-sponsored training, leaving them particularly exposed to the impact AI is having on their work. Serrano said the arts schools are well placed to deliver such training because they already teach the people entering those industries. 

Some educators preparing those workers, however, question whether AI’s promised efficiencies justify the costs to artists’ rights, and students’ learning and livelihoods. 

The Emily Carr University Faculty Association laid out their objections in a submission this spring to the People’s Consultation on AI, an initiative organized by academics, human rights advocates and public interest organizations to contribute to AI policy discussions. The association argued that commercial generative AI’s long-term harms outweigh its claimed benefits, citing its use of artists’ work without permission or pay, environmental costs and dependence on U.S. technology companies. 

The association warned that by relying on AI, students risk outsourcing intellectual work before developing the skills to evaluate the technology’s outputs. Automating entry-level jobs could also deprive graduates of opportunities to develop professional skills, the association argued.

Its critique excluded locally hosted models trained on narrowly defined datasets for specific purposes. 

“There are folks who, in principle, will never touch the technology,” said Serrano. “We’re not going to force them to use AI.” 

Some faculty at Canada’s arts schools are experimenting with how to teach alongside the technology. In his residential and hospitality design studios, Parantap Bhatt, an assistant professor at OCAD, requires students using AI to explain its role in their projects, and which outputs they accepted, rejected or reworked. Fellow OCAD professor Alex Manu’s Generative AI Futures course explores how the technology changes the way designers develop ideas.

Serrano sees that experimentation as part of a long tradition of artists working with emerging technologies and influencing their development. She pointed to Canadian artist Char Davies, who became a founding director of animation software company Softimage, whose tools helped create visual effects for films including Jurassic Park and The Matrix. After leaving the company, Davies continued to use many of the technologies she developed in her art. 

“It’s not just about adopting it,” Serrano said of technology in the arts. “It’s about evolving it. It’s about reframing it, breaking it, and doing all sorts of things to it, and with it that often traditional industries don’t.”