Josh Simons joins Proudly Human advisory board

Vinyl Group CEO Josh Simons has joined the advisory board of Proudly Human, the certification organisation founded by former Australian Chief Scientist Dr Alan Finkel AC to help audiences identify human-created work.

The appointment comes as Proudly Human expands across music, publishing, journalism and other creative industries, offering a publicly verifiable trust mark for work assessed against its limits on artificial intelligence use.

Finkel serves as founder and executive chairman, alongside founding CEO Trevor Woods.

A focus on creative provenance

Woods said Simons’ experience across music, technology and media would support the organisation’s expansion.

“Josh has spent his career at the nexus of creativity and technology. He understands both the incredible opportunities technology can create, and the importance of provenance and value of human creativity. As Proudly Human continues to expand into music, publishing and media, that perspective will be hugely valuable.”

Simons, a former recording artist and songwriter, said supporting human creativity and recognising AI’s potential were compatible positions.

“I've spent my life either making things myself or building businesses that rely on human creativity, whilst also being a believer in technology and the potential of AI. They're not mutually exclusive positions. What Proudly Human is doing is establishing a simple but important principle: people should know what they're consuming and who or what has created it.”

He said identifying the origins of creative work would become increasingly important.

“Human creativity has value because it comes from human experience, judgement and expression, and being able to identify that provenance will become more important, not less. Alan recognised the problem early and has sought to address it pragmatically, building infrastructure for transparency and choice rather than being anti-technological progress. I'm very pleased to be joining Proudly Human and helping to advance that mission, particularly in music, media and the creator economy.”

From music to media

Simons is CEO and executive director of ASX-listed Vinyl Group, whose publishing assets include PEDESTRIAN.TV, Rolling Stone Australia, BuzzFeed Australia, Time Out Australia, Concrete Playground and Mediaweek.

Its music and creator platforms include Vampr, Vinyl.com and Serenade.

Simons founded Vampr, a professional network and talent marketplace for the music industry with more than 1.6 million users worldwide, according to the announcement.

After Jaxsta acquired Vampr in 2023, he became CEO of the listed company and led its transformation into Vinyl Group.

How the certification works

Proudly Human describes its mission as “pro-human, not anti-AI”. Its framework sets sector-specific limits on acceptable AI use, assesses works against those standards and provides a certificate that audiences can check publicly. Certification can be withdrawn if a work breaches the standards.

The organisation says it is continuing to expand into publishing, journalism, visual arts, music, film and podcasting.

Mediaweek is part of Vinyl Group.