Screen Australia's funding terms now name AI compliance

The shot

Screen Australia, the Australian federal government's screen-funding agency, publishes its Terms of Trade as an accordion-style page on its own site. Clause 12 of that page, titled 'Artificial intelligence' and retrieved 16 September 2026, states: 'Applicants are required to comply with any guidelines or requirements set by Screen Australia in relation to the use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools or services in applications and/or funded projects or activities.' A downloadable PDF of the Terms of Trade hosted on the same site, filed under a 2017 name but uploaded in July 2025, does not contain this clause.

What the documents show

The agency's own live web page establishes that AI use in a funding application or a funded project is now a named condition of Screen Australia support, tying compliance to 'any guidelines or requirements' the agency sets, without spelling out those guidelines' content on this particular page. The absence of the same clause from the PDF confirms that the page and the file are not kept in sync, and that the live, currently-in-force text is the one carrying the AI condition. Neither document states when Clause 12 was added, and no dated statement describing the change was found; this record treats the clause as current as retrieved, not as newly announced.

The workflow

An applicant to a Screen Australia fund should read the current Terms of Trade page directly, rather than a downloaded or previously saved PDF, since Clause 12 shows the two versions can diverge. The clause frames compliance as an obligation tied to guidelines the agency 'sets,' which places responsibility on an applicant to locate and follow whatever specific AI guidance applies to the fund in question, alongside the general credit, rights and warranty obligations the same document sets out elsewhere.

What the tool does not change

Clause 12 does not itself describe assessment criteria for AI-assisted content, does not prohibit AI use, and does not amend the specific guidelines of any individual Screen Australia fund; it is a general compliance clause pointing toward guidance the agency may issue separately. Reading this clause as a complete AI policy for Australian-funded production would overstate what a single accordion item in a general terms document states, and fund-specific AI guidance should be checked in that fund's own published guidelines rather than assumed from this clause.

• Which Screen Australia fund are you applying to, and does its specific guidelines document reference AI separately from Clause 12?
• Are you reading the current Terms of Trade web page or an older downloaded PDF that may not reflect Clause 12?
• What guidelines has Screen Australia actually 'set' in relation to AI tools, beyond the compliance obligation Clause 12 states?

The comparison between the live page and the static PDF is itself the finding worth keeping: a funder's binding terms can now include an AI clause that a saved copy of the same document does not show, a reason to treat 'as retrieved' dating as more than a formality.