Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what recent assessment she has made regarding the impact of artificial intelligence developments on employment opportunities for performers and creative workers.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the global trends which will transform our future, changing jobs across the economy, including those working in the arts and creative industries.

The creative industries’ growing interdependence with the digital sector is inspiring business growth, invention and investment. The sector already makes ingenious use of AI in many ways: to recommend content on streaming platforms, to create Luke Skywalker’s voice in The Mandalorian, and to govern the behaviour of non-playable characters in video games. However adoption of AI is not uniform across the sub sectors, which risks us missing prime opportunities to improve productivity and growth.

We want our creative workers to be able to build further on these technological opportunities, which will play an increasingly vital part in the sectors’ success, whilst safeguarding against risks associated with increasing automation. Our Creative Industries Sector Vision will set out a long-term strategy focused on promoting growth, with a section dedicated to the exciting future of this dynamic workforce, including the impact of AI.

In the National AI Strategy, the government set out a number of steps it is taking to develop the brightest, most diverse workforce: from bolstering the provision of higher level skills at PhD and Masters level to developing research that helps employees, from across sectors, to understand what skills are needed for them to effectively use AI in a business setting.

Additionally, UK Research & Innovation (UKRI) is developing a programme to help accelerate the adoption of AI in certain low AI maturity sectors which are key to the UK economy, with the creative industries being a potential priority sector to explore, which will help to improve the sector’s productivity.