TORONTO — New rules will address how copyright applies to artificial intelligence, AI Minister Evan Solomon has told The Logic. The Liberals will also not reintroduce the previous government’s proposed AI law wholesale, he said, with Ottawa currently working on an updated “regulatory framework” for the technology.

The government is currently considering which aspects of the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act (AIDA) it may revive, Solomon said, adding that it will consult on any new rules for AI before introducing them. “Canada can’t regulate alone to stifle innovation, but we can’t have no regulation and have the Wild West,” he said at a Toronto Tech Week event for tech executives and investors on Monday, citing the need to build public trust in AI and to protect people’s data.

The new regulatory framework will include provisions on copyright. “In principle, we support the idea that creators have rights to be compensated for usage of their work,” Solomon told The Logic in an interview after the event. “But where that line is is still being determined by the courts.”

News publishers currently are suing Cohere and OpenAI, claiming that the tech firms violated their copyright by using their content to train AI models. Music publishers have taken Anthropic to court on similar grounds, while visual artists are pursuing image-generation startups Stability AI and Midjourney. 

Solomon said it’s too early to say what copyright exemptions or changes the Liberals might introduce, citing the ongoing legal cases. The government wants to “make sure that we protect the cultural sovereignty of our creators,” he told The Logic, adding that the policy will have to account for how AI uses an artist’s work and how much of it is used.

The music industry also saw copyright battles when artists began sampling each other’s songs. Similarly, AI may need “some kind of compensatory structure,” he said. “What that is and at what level is going to be pretty tricky.” He cited the challenges Ottawa has had with the digital services tax and the Online News Act. Implemented under the previous Liberal government, both policies required payments from tech giants and caused pushback from U.S. businesses and lawmakers. 

Ottawa’s attempts to legislate AI stretch back to June 2022, when the previous Liberal government first proposed a new AI law for Canada. AIDA would have imposed new requirements on firms that developed and deployed so-called “high-impact” AI systems, including identifying and mitigating risks. 

At the time, businesses said AIDA was too vague and would stifle innovation, while digital rights advocates said it needed stronger enforcement mechanisms and that Ottawa needed to do more consultation. The Liberals later provided more detail and tried to add new rules for generative AI tools into the law. The proposals expired when the Liberals prorogued Parliament in January.

Solomon’s comments on copyright are unlikely to go unnoticed amongst major tech firms developing AI and creative industries protesting against it. Cohere, Google and other tech firms have called for Canada to add an exemption to the Copyright Act for text and data mining to train machine-learning systems, which they say does not infringe on intellectual property. They also oppose any new requirement to license works from creators. 

Authors, artists and cultural associations, particularly in Quebec, oppose such a carve out. The Copyright Act already has a “fair dealing” exemption that lets people use protected works without permission or licensing for research, education and a few other purposes.

Last month, the White House fired the head of the U.S. Copyright Office, shortly after the agency published a report stating that the development process for generative AI uses protected works in ways that implicate copyright owners’ rights.

Canada is not the only country to dial back plans to regulate AI. Over the last two years, several governments have shifted their emphasis from making new rules for AI to encouraging adoption of the technology in pursuit of economic growth. The Trump administration has warned against “excessive regulation” of AI and threatened to retaliate if other governments impose new requirements on American tech firms.

Solomon said Canada must act quickly to secure its place in AI, amid a global race, but the Liberal government will not abandon regulation in pursuit of speed.