'Humans involved all the way': AI used in council's10-year plan

West Tamar Council takes in the city of Launceston. (ABC News: Morgan Timms)

A northern Tasmanian council has used AI to help produce its 10-year strategic plan. The council says employing a consultant to do the same work would have taken more than 12 months.

A tech adviser says AI offers small councils the same tools used by the world's biggest companies.

Public consultation on the West Tamar Draft Community Strategic Plan closes on June 28.

Tasmania's West Tamar region is known for its vineyards, gastronomy, national parks and agricultural scene. It is also one of the state's fastest-growing areas.

Last week, its council released a draft of a 10-year strategic plan in a community consultation paper where the data was "synthesised" by artificial intelligence (AI).

West Tamar Council chief executive Kristen Desmond said the use of AI "allowed us to have a document that's got more depth to it at about a fifth of the price".

West Tamar Council chief executive Kristen Desmond (left) and mayor Christina Holmdahl. (ABC News: Mackenzie Archer)

Ms Desmond said the process was very similar to employing a consultant, but took less time.

"If we asked a consultant to review 50 strategic documents and come up with themes out of those, before they even started talking to people, that would be 12 months of work," she said.

"AI synthesised [multiple] documents. Then we had seven targeted community workshops from which the AI was able to bring out a set of themes.

"The reports from both of those processes were synthesised and that gave us the basis of the plan."

West Tamar Council stretches from Launceston in the south to Greens Beach at the mouth of the River Tamar. (Facebook: West Tamar Council)

To allay residents' fears about the use of the tool, Ms Desmond said "humans were involved all the way along" and it was "people who turned it into the document".

"From the strategies that we supplied, to being at every one of the targeted community workshops to checking the reports … council was kept updated through the whole process."

She said the final version was also "very different to the base document produced by AI".

The regional council takes in populated areas as well as more rural locales in the Tamar Valley.

Former Greens candidate and local resident Jack Davenport said the document lacked local relevance.

"You could easily substitute the place names, the West Tamar references, with a completely different place anywhere in the country and it would probably be just as applicable," he said.

"I think it oversimplifies the relationship between the di