Working in Schools - Ethics and Safety

Make AI Movies follows the protocols set by the Education Futures Institute in the Mandatory All Staff Training (MAST) protocol document, as well as the Brisbane Catholic Education (BCE) National Catholic Safeguarding Standards document, when visiting schools and interacting with students. All Make AI Movies staff and contractors have blue cards and go through an induction process.

Make AI Movies has designed these production workshops to enhance learning, with a strong focus on building AI literacy and ensuring ethical, safe, and transparent practices. 

Make AI movies supports and adheres to the Australian Framework for Generative AI in Schools:
All education systems (public, independent, and Catholic) are guided by this national approach, which focuses on using AI to support, rather than replace, student learning and teacher expertise.

Key Principles:
The framework emphasises six core principles: 

• Teaching and learning
• Human and social wellbeing
• Transparency
• Fairness
• Accountability
• Privacy, security, and safety

Supervised Use: 

When approved, students may use AI for brainstorming, structuring assignments, or as a research tool, but it is generally required that the work submitted is their own. Make AI Movies will guide students through a structured, human learning process.

Restrictions: 

Many schools have restrictions on using AI for high-stakes assessments, exams, or homework where independent, critical thinking is required. This does not impact Make AI Movies workshops.

Age Appropriateness: 

Make AI movies considers age restrictions and data safety. All conceptual and generation work is supervised, and the tools used do not allow for adult content to be generated. 

Students will be closely monitored and supervised during the production of creative work. 

Professional Judgment: 

Make AI movies workshops are intended to complement, not replace, learning experiences. 

All work produced will be reviewed by workshop facilitators for accuracy, bias, and appropriateness. 

Data Protection: 

Make AI Movies complies with privacy laws, ensuring that personal information about students or staff is not entered into public AI tools.

In the permission release form, parents can opt-out if they do not wish their child’s image or voice being used in the production of the movie. 

However, caregivers should know that photos and video will be taken during the workshops for publicity purposes, and this will be covered by the permission agreement.

Bias and Misinformation: 

Make AI Movies will teach students to be critical of AI, acknowledging that these tools can sometimes produce inaccurate or biased content. 

Does the Make AI Movies program breach the copyright of other creators?

Make AI Movies guides students away from using well known trademarked and copyrighted styles, characters, stories and franchises, encouraging instead the production of original ideas from the students’ imaginations.

Isn't using AI stealing because AI platforms have scraped data from the internet to train on?

There are legitimate issues about how platforms have used other people’s copyrighted work as training data.
The courts are still deciding these outcomes, but Make AI Movies stands on principle for the ethical use of copyrighted material, and the payment of creators when their work is used. 

The movies that are produced on these workshops are for educational purposes only, and will not be used in commercial contexts.

Will AI steal the work of the students?

All work that is digitally produced now seems fair game to be used by AI companies to train on. For future proofing intellectual property and copyright protection, all student names will be credited in the production of each movie.

Does AI hurt the environment?

AI uses a lot of computing power and therefore energy as well as water for cooling. 

Traditional filmmaking uses a lot of energy too though with transport, travel and physical production, and this doesn't occur with AI filmmaking. 

Matthew Donaldson Workshops and Make AI Movies have raised the issues with government asking for comparative analysis data, and official action to move towards more serious efforts in the production of clean, safe energy to tackle this issue.

Is AI Filmmaking replacing traditional screen industry jobs?

In the same way that digital video made film projectors, film cameras and film processing labs obsolete, technology is changing again, and is making production cheaper, easier, and more accessible to those from lower socio-economic communities, democratising storytelling, and giving under-represented communities the opportunity to tell their stories.

Changes in technology always mean that some old jobs disappear, while new jobs are created.

Make AI Movies still teaches the fundamentals of storytelling, directing and producing, but gives more of a complete overview of what it takes to make a movie, rather than just focusing on ‘on-set’ roles.

Make AI Movies also offers professional development workshops for screen industry professionals, who wish to learn new skills to future proof their careers.

Can AI make movies with just a prompt and a click? 

Not just yet. And if it does get to that stage, they won’t be any good. 

The human mind always wants new, interesting, and engaging creative content to make us go wow. AI tools provide creatives with huge opportunities to let our imaginations run free without the constraints of budget, time, or logistics that are involved in traditional movie making. Making movies is very difficult, time consuming, expensive and very laborious work, but AI is making it just a little bit easier for everyone.

Will using AI make us stupid?

Movie making and storytelling is a talent unique to humans, and is different to just asking AI stupid questions because we are too lazy to research. We use storytelling to communicate our thoughts, feelings and beliefs which spring up from our own unique personal HUMAN experiences of the world. 

Filmmaking is complex and challenging and requires a lot of thought, planning and work. 

AI will certainly make it easier, but the creative work involved in Make AI Movies workshops means that AI filmmaking most certainly will not make us stupid.