Generative AI is rapidly transforming creative markets, raising urgent questions about what happens when human works are used to train machines without consent or payment. Using authors as a focal case, this seminar examines how AI is reshaping incentives, property rights, and bargaining power in the cultural economy.
- 10am, Thursday 7 May 2026, online
Survey evidence from over 400 Australian authors reveals strong resistance to uncompensated AI training, widespread concern about income loss, and limited professional uptake of generative tools. The findings point to a growing disconnect between the pace of AI innovation and the economic foundations that sustain creative work. The analysis explores practical policy and market design options, including stronger transparency requirements, collective licensing models, and remuneration frameworks. The aim is to identify credible pathways that support innovation while maintaining fair and sustainable outcomes for creators.
During the session, Paul Crosby will discuss the study’s data, methodology and findings. There will be time for Q&A following the presentation.
This 1-hour talk is part of Creative PEC‘s Seminar Series.
Speakers
Paul Crosby
Senior Lecturer in the Department of Economics
Macquarie University
Paul Crosby is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Economics at Macquarie University, Sydney, and a Creative PEC Research Fellow. He is an applied microeconomist whose research focuses on the economics of digitisation and the creative industries.
Giorgio Fazio (chair)
Professor of Macroeconomics
Newcastle University
Giorgio Fazio is an applied economist with expertise in macroeconomics, trade and investment. He has published several articles in international peer-reviewed journals and chapters in edited books on issues such as exchange rates determination, crises and contagion, growth, and convergence at the national and regional levels, productivity, innovation, trade and FDI, civic and cultural capital, creative industries economics.
He has been a Creative PEC researcher since 2018, leading the work on international trade, investment and migration and contributing to economic research in the creative industries in PEC Discussion papers, blogs and peer reviewed journal articles.
Giorgio is Chair of Macroeconomics at Newcastle University Business School and since 2023 is the Research Director of the Creative Industries Policy Evidence Centre.
