South Australia puts AI under an Australia-first royal commission microscope

South Australia will establish Australia’s first royal commission dedicated to artificial intelligence, putting the rapidly developing technology under the country’s most significant public policy inquiry into AI to date.

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The Royal Commission into Artificial Intelligence is expected to begin on 1 October 2026. Its final report must be handed to the South Australian Government no later than 1 July 2027.

For Australia’s media and creative industries, the inquiry is significant. Creative industry representatives are among those expected to provide evidence and submissions alongside businesses, unions, technology developers, academics and other experts.

What the AI royal commission will examine

The South Australian Government said the inquiry will focus on policy solutions rather than retrospectively investigating wrongdoing. Its terms of reference are still being developed.

The proposed areas of focus include:

• state and national policy and regulatory settings
• AI’s impact on schools, universities and vocational education
• opportunities and risks for public services, including health
• the impact on South Australia’s workforce and skills
• AI-related infrastructure and its relationship with energy, water use and the electricity grid.

The commission will be led by a panel of commissioners with relevant expertise. ABC News reported the government plans to appoint three commissioners following an international search, with the inquiry expected to cost about $3 million.

South Australia makes a national first move

The inquiry goes further than previous Australian government investigations into AI. ABC has described it as a “genuine national first” and the biggest Australian public inquiry yet into the policy challenges created by the technology.

Peter Malinauskas, Premier of South Australia, announced the commission after returning from the United States, where he met representatives from OpenAI, Anthropic and Apple.

Malinauskas said the government wanted to shape how AI develops rather than allow its adoption to proceed without adequate safeguards.

“We can choose to set the agenda. We can choose to set the guard rails and the policy frameworks to ensure that we use AI in a way that puts people first,” he said.

Creative industries get a seat at the table

The inclusion of creative industries in the consultation process gives the media, advertising and production sectors a direct avenue into the inquiry. These industries are already confronting rapid changes to jobs, skills and workflows as generative AI adoption accelerates.

The government said the inquiry will seek evidence from a broad section of the community before recommending policy responses. Its approach will mirror South Australia’s previous royal commissions into early childhood education and domestic, family and sexual violence, which were designed to propose reforms rather than investigate past legal wrongdoing.

South Australia has already established an Office for Artificial Intelligence and was the first Australian jurisdiction to create a Cabinet Minister for Artificial Intelligence. The state is also home to the Australian Institute for Machine Learning at Lot Fourteen and the Responsible AI Research Centre.

Questions over speed and cost

The Australia-first move has also attracted scrutiny over whether a royal commission can keep pace with the technology it is examining.

Rebecca Johnson, a University of Sydney researcher specialising in AI evaluation and safety, told ABC Radio Adelaide that existing research had already identified risks around jobs, privacy, security and accountability. She questioned whether the $3 million could instead be directed towards implementing safeguards.

The commission will have less than a year from its planned October start to its July 2027 reporting deadline.