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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tThe Quebec Fleur-de-lis provincial flag flies on top of the National Assembly\u2019s main tower, Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2023 in Quebec City. THE CANADIAN PRESS\/Jacques Boissinot<\/p>\n
\u201cAll scenarios are a little bit on the table right now,\u201d Val\u00e9rie D\u2019Amour, who led the feasibility study, said in an interview. \u201cWe have a lot of ideas and we want to validate the possibilities with cultural stakeholders, as well as with data owners and providers, who will be involved in the discussions.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
BAnQ says the future platform would not serve as a public distribution channel for creative works and that access to the data would be tightly controlled.<\/p>\n
Marie Gr\u00e9goire, president and chief executive officer of BAnQ, said the goal is to ensure that AI systems better reflect Quebec society and culture.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat means having Quebec references, whether in small models or large models, whether they come from research or from the business community,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Similar initiatives have emerged elsewhere, including in Sweden, where large collections of Nordic-language texts have been assembled to help develop generative AI models for Scandinavian languages.<\/p>\n
BAnQ plans to begin with its own collections before considering data from other sources.<\/p>\n
The initiative stems from a recommendation made in a 2024 report by Quebec\u2019s innovation council. The report attributed the problem in part to the \u201cvery small quantity of data on Quebec\u201d available in AI training datasets.<\/p>\n
Destiny Tch\u00e9houali, co-holder of a Quebec-based research chair focused on French-language artificial intelligence and digital technologies, said Quebec culture remains \u201cunderrepresented in the corpora currently circulating in the AI world.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd we run the risk of reproducing linguistic biases and cultural biases. And when we also talk about Indigenous peoples, we run an even greater risk of all these biases,\u201d said Tch\u00e9houali, a professor in the communications department at Universit\u00e9 du Qu\u00e9bec \u00e0 Montr\u00e9al.<\/p>\n
He said the proposed database would represent \u201cstrategic infrastructure\u201d that could help establish guidelines for how local content is identified, catalogued and tracked within today\u2019s AI systems.<\/p>\n
Copyright concerns have emerged as a major issue for the cultural sector as BAnQ develops the proposed database.<\/p>\n
But Gr\u00e9goire argued the proposed platform could offer creators greater protection than the current system. \u201cRight now, it\u2019s a bit like the Wild West,\u201d she said. \u201cData is being harvested for free, and that should not be the case.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said the database could act as a centralized gateway that would make it easier to compensate creators whose works are used.<\/p>\n
Gr\u00e9goire said that by working collectively, cultural organizations would be better positioned to ensure creators are paid and that the sector remains sustainable over the long term.<\/p>\n
\n\t\tWinnipeg Free Press | Newsletter\n\t<\/p>\n
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Still, some artists worry that contributing their work to AI training systems could ultimately undermine their own livelihoods.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe main criticism we hear in the field is that, even if artists earn income from it, they are still feeding the beast that will eventually be used to replace contracts they may lose because of AI,\u201d said Maxime Harvey, a postdoctoral researcher at the National Institute of Scientific Research and a member of the same research chair.<\/p>\n
The feasibility study envisions the platform becoming operational by 2029, although D\u2019Amour said the timeline will be reassessed following the experimental phase.<\/p>\n
The study estimates a five-year budget of nearly $10.5 million through 2030, including operating and capital costs. BAnQ has received $340,000 from the Quebec government for the feasibility study and a further $750,000 to support the project\u2019s 12-month experimentation phase.<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 31, 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MONTREAL \u2013 Quebec\u2019s national library is moving ahead with plans to create a database of cultural and government…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":706442,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194296],"tags":[49,48,22073],"class_list":["post-706441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-winnipeg","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-winnipeg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=706441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706441\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/706442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=706441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=706441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=706441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}