Most Creators in New Global Survey Say Generative AI Is Cutting Their Earnings
More than 90% of respondents to a new global survey agree that generative AI, the software that produces text and images from a prompt, has directly and negatively affected the earnings of rightsholders. Rightsholders are the people and companies who own the rights to a work, such as authors, publishers and illustrators.
The findings come from a study released by IFRRO, a global network of collective management organisations. Those are groups that collect licence fees for the use of creative work and pass the money on to the creators behind it. The study is titled The Legal, Policy, and Market Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Text and Image-Based Works, and it was developed with Eleonora Rosati, an attorney and intellectual property law professor. Publishing Perspectives reported the release on 29 October 2026.
The report pairs legal and market analysis with IFRRO's 2026 global survey, which drew nearly 2,000 responses from authors, publishers and reprographic rights organisations. Reprographic rights organisations, or RROs, license the copying of published material, such as photocopies and digital extracts. The survey received responses from every continent.
The survey's most striking number may be the one on protection. 96% of respondents believe the current copyright framework, the set of laws that gives creators control over how their work is copied and used, does not adequately protect them.
IFRRO says its members are collective management organisations and creators' and publishers' associations active in text and images. The network has 161 members, operates in approximately 90 countries and covers more than 2 million authors and publishers.
The study also brings together emerging case law, meaning recent court rulings on AI and copyright, alongside evidence of market impact. It sits within a busy autumn for the group. IFRRO took part in the "Copyright and Human Creativity in the Age of AI" conference at the Irish Film Institute in Dublin on 14 October 2026. On 22 October it responded to Singapore's consultation on AI and intellectual property. A New York Law School event called "AI Governance and Copyright: Licensing the Path Forward?" also uses a recently released IFRRO Guide as its starting point for a discussion of sustainable licensing.
Those who want to hear the findings directly can join a webinar on 23 November, where Rosati will present the study's key conclusions.
For readers, the thread running through all of this is simple. Libraries and schools often pay licence fees so that people can borrow and copy work without paying each time. When a machine learns from that work, the question of who is paid, and how, becomes a live one.
