UNESCO Report: AI Could Cut Artist Incomes by Nearly a Quarter by 2028

When Maria Santos landed her first record deal five years ago, she thought she had finally made it. The independent musician from São Paulo had spent years building a following, playing small venues, and self-releasing tracks online. Today, she’s watching her streaming revenue decline month after month—not because fewer people are listening, but because the economics of creativity are being rewritten by algorithms she never signed up for.

“Music creators could see their revenues fall by 24 per cent, while those working in the audiovisual sector may lose 21 per cent of their income due to the expanding presence of AI-generated content in global markets.” — UNESCO Re|Shaping Policies for Creativity Report

A $24 Billion Warning Shot

On February 18, UNESCO dropped a bombshell that should have every policymaker’s attention. Their flagship Re|Shaping Policies for Creativity report, covering more than 120 countries, projects that generative AI will drive significant income losses for artists by 2028. The numbers are stark: nearly a quarter of music creators’ revenue at risk, more than a fifth for audiovisual workers.

The report isn’t just about statistics—it’s about the millions of cultural workers whose livelihoods hang in the balance. These disruptions are occurring at a pace that outstrips current policy responses, exacerbating inequalities and threatening to marginalize creators who lack the resources to adapt.

Intellectual property violations have become endemic. Creators are experiencing heightened exposure as AI-generated outputs enter marketplaces, often trained on their work without consent or compensation. The shift toward digital production has created new opportunities, yes, but it’s also intensified economic uncertainty for those who make culture possible.

The Creative Digital Divide

UNESCO’s findings reveal a fault line that runs deeper than AI itself. While 67 per cent of people in developed countries possess essential digital skills, that figure plummets to just 28 per cent in developing countries. This digital divide, paired with the growing dominance of major streaming platforms and opaque algorithms that hinder content visibility, is contributing to widening disparities among creators.

The Global South is being hit hardest. Artists in these regions often lack the legal frameworks, collective bargaining power, and technological infrastructure to protect their work from being harvested for AI training datasets. When a musician in Lagos or a filmmaker in Jakarta sees their style replicated by a generative model, what recourse do they have?

“The current era represents a critical moment for the creative economy. Without renewed investment, fairer market conditions and stronger international cooperation, creators risk being further marginalised as technologies evolve.” — Khaled El-Enany, UNESCO Director-General

More Than 8,100 Policy Measures

The UNESCO report isn’t just sounding an alarm—it’s offering a roadmap. The agency has cataloged over 8,100 policy measures across its member states and is calling for urgent, coordinated action to protect creators’ rights, strengthen regulatory frameworks, and reinforce the cultural sector’s contribution to sustainable development.

Transparency requirements for AI training data are emerging as a key demand. Creators want to know when their work has been used to train models, and they want the ability to opt out or negotiate compensation. Collective licensing schemes are being proposed as a way to ensure that the benefits of AI-generated content flow back to the human creators whose work made those systems possible.

The report stresses that cultural policy must be mobilized as a strategic priority—not just to safeguard livelihoods, but to ensure that creativity continues to serve as a driver of social cohesion, economic opportunity, and cultural diversity in a rapidly changing world.

The Stakes for Global Culture

What’s at risk here goes beyond individual incomes. If the current trajectory continues, we may see a homogenization of culture as AI systems trained on existing works generate derivative content that crowds out original voices. The algorithms that power streaming platforms already favor certain types of content; add AI-generated material to the mix, and the discovery problem becomes existential.

The coming years will determine whether we build a creative economy that works for everyone—or one that concentrates power in the hands of platform owners and AI developers while sidelining the artists who create the value in the first place.

For creators like Maria Santos, the question isn’t whether AI will change their industry. It already has. The question is whether policymakers will act fast enough to ensure that change doesn’t come at the cost of their livelihoods.

This article was reported by the ArtificialDaily editorial team. For more information, visit UN News.