Brave New World? New report warns generative AI is already costing creators their livelihoods
Built on evidence from over 10,000 creators, the move lays bare the real-world damage generative AI is already doing to creative careers, and the fight for fairness is only just beginning.
Creators taking a stand in Granary Square, King’s Cross. Including illustrators Benji Davies, Chris Haughton, Ged Adamson, Momoko Abe and Simona Ciraolo, and AOI Board Member Jhinuk Sarkar. Photograph © Ozzy Nada.
The Association of Illustrators (AOI), alongside four leading creator-led organisations, has today co-launched a significant new report calling for urgent action on generative AI and creators' rights.
Titled Brave New World? Justice For Creators in the Age of GenAI, it's one of the most wide-ranging studies yet into how unregulated AI is reshaping creative work in the UK, and not for the better.
Built on evidence from more than 10,000 creators working across illustration, writing, music, photography and performance, the findings are stark. Creative jobs are disappearing. Commissions are being cancelled. Work is being scraped without permission. Many creators are left wondering whether their careers can remain sustainable.
Without meaningful government intervention, we risk losing the very people who power the UK's celebrated creative industries, which are worth £124.6 billion to the economy. Creators are not a nice-to-have.
AOI CEO Rachel Hill says the results of their report should act as a wake-up call. "The UK's creative industries are one of our greatest strengths, powered by the skill and labour of creators," she explains. "This report shows how unregulated generative AI is already harming that success, with work taken without permission, jobs lost, and creators pushed into competition with systems built on their own intellectual property.
"If the government is serious about supporting the creative industries, it must act now to protect creators' rights and ensure human creativity remains central to our culture and economy."
Brave New World? is published by a coalition of organisations within the Creators' Rights Alliance, including the Independent Society of Musicians, the Society of Authors, Equity, the Association of Photographers and the AOI. Together, creators gathered in London's tech hub at Granary Square in King's Cross to make one thing clear: this is not about rejecting technology. It's about demanding fairness.
CEOs from left to right: Anna Ganley (SoA), Deborah Annetts (ISM), Isabelle Doran (AOP) and Rachel Hill (AOI). Photograph by © Adam Shaw
At the centre of the report is the CLEAR Framework for AI, a call for consent, licensing, ethical training data, accountability, and proper remuneration. In other words, a future where innovation does not come at the cost of human creative work.
As Baroness Kidron OBE puts it, this is ultimately a question of justice: what is being taken, she argues, is the private property of UK citizens, protected by law – and it is not the government's to give away.
This report captures only one part of a larger shift. AI is not going away, and some tools can be genuinely useful for creatives when they support rather than substitute, helping with practical tasks and day-to-day workflows.
But generative AI is a different story. These systems have been built on scraped creative work, often without consent, and are now being used to compete with the very people who made that work possible. The challenge is ensuring the future of AI is shaped with creatives, not at their expense.
If you want to read the AOI's report, you can download it from its website today.
