A new UNESCO report forecasts that generative AI could cause global revenue losses of up to 24% for music creators and 21% for audiovisual creators by 2028. The study found digital revenues now make up 35% of creators’ income, doubling since 2018, which increases their exposure to infringement. Legal challenges are mounting against AI firms like OpenAI, Google, Meta, and Anthropic over their training practices, while industry groups call for new compensation standards.
Generative AI outputs are projected to trigger significant revenue losses for creative professionals worldwide by 2028, according to a new global monitoring study. The report by UNESCO forecasts potential losses of 24% for music creators and 21% for those in audiovisual fields as AI-generated content expands.
The financial vulnerability of creators has grown as their income becomes increasingly digital. UNESCO found digital revenues now represent 35% of total creator income, a sharp increase from just 17% recorded in 2018.
Legal experts note that existing copyright frameworks are struggling to address the scale of AI’s impact. Ishita Sharma, managing partner at Fathom Legal, stated that “existing fair use and fair dealing doctrines appear increasingly strained in the context of AI training and output replication.”
She explained these doctrines were designed for human, case-specific uses rather than the “wholesale ingestion of vast copyrighted corpora for commercial model development.” This legal uncertainty currently advantages large technology firms, according to the analysis.
The industry is responding through both litigation and new initiatives. OpenAI and other AI companies face multiple copyright lawsuits from authors and publishers, with a New York judge recently allowing key infringement claims to proceed in consolidated litigation.
Major publishers have also joined litigation alleging Google copied books without permission to train its Gemini AI model. Judges have granted Meta and Anthropic partial fair use victories in separate but similar book-training cases.
Over 500 Hollywood professionals have backed the newly formed Creators Coalition on AI, calling for enforceable standards on training and compensation. Concurrently, Google.org announced a $2 million investment in the Sundance Institute to train artists in AI skills.
