A membership survey counted authors' income lost to AI tools

The Society of Authors' 2024 survey of nearly 800 respondents recorded reported use of, and losses to, generative AI.

Historical event

April 11, 2024

First source published

April 11, 2024

Site publication

September 18, 2026

The record

On 11 April 2024 the Society of Authors, the UK trade union for writers, illustrators and literary translators, published the results of a survey it had run throughout January 2024 among its roughly 12,500 members and other authors. The Society's own report states it received nearly 800 responses on "respondents' experiences of generative artificial intelligence (AI) systems, and their views and concerns about the future impact on creative careers." This is a membership survey, offered by the organisation as advocacy evidence rather than an independently conducted academic study, and its findings should be read as self-reported experience within that population.

What the documents show

The Society's report states that 22 percent of respondents had used generative AI in their work, including 37 percent of translators and 12 percent of illustrators, and that a quarter of illustrators and over a third of translators reported having already lost work because of it. It records that 37 percent of illustrators and 43 percent of translators said income from their work had decreased in value because of generative AI, and that majorities across every surveyed group expected further negative impact on future income. The same report states that 94 percent of respondents wanted credit and compensation, and 95 percent wanted consent sought, when their work trains AI systems. A year later, in March 2025, the Society published a second, separate survey, this one on a UK government copyright consultation, again describing its own methodology and response count rather than an independent audit of either survey.

Why it stays interesting

A membership survey documents a population's reported experience, not a verified industry-wide loss figure; a reader should keep the reporting organisation, the sampled population and the survey period attached to any percentage drawn from it, rather than treating 22 percent or 37 percent as a fact about the wider profession. This is an editorial note: the value of such a survey lies in what a defined group of working translators and illustrators say happened to their own income and assignments, which is a different kind of evidence than a market-wide statistic, and useful precisely because it is not confused with one.

What to read next

The Society's follow-up 2025 report on the UK copyright and AI consultation extends the same membership-survey method to a specific policy question, an opt-out text-and-data-mining exception, and is worth reading alongside this one to see how the organisation's evidence gathering continued.

• Does a cited AI-and-income figure name the surveying organisation, the sampled population and the survey period, or has it been generalised beyond them?
• What distinguishes members who reported using generative AI by choice from those who reported being asked to use it by a publisher or commissioner?
• How would a translator's or illustrator's reported experience differ from a novelist's, given the survey's own breakdown by profession?

Read this way, the survey is a documented account of one membership's reported experience in a single month, not a settled measure of generative AI's effect on publishing income as a whole.

Sources & reading trail

The Society's own account of its January 2024 member survey, response count and reported findings.

Source published: 11 April 2024 · Retrieved: 16 September 2026

Shows the Society ran a second, distinct member survey in January 2025 on a related policy question.

Source published: 26 March 2025 · Retrieved: 16 September 2026

Reports, filings, records and studies establish the entry; the reading of why it stays interesting is Chapter Ledger editorial analysis. This retrospective draft does not imply the site published on the event date.

Continue reading

• European publishers asked AI developers for transparency
• Browse the complete the ledger archive

Published September 18, 2026, not on the date of the event described.