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Ministry of Culture | Ministry of Information & Broadcasting
UNESCO report, Re|Shaping Policies for Creativity warns that human creators face a structural economic crisis, with projected revenue losses of up to 24% by 2028 due to the rise of Generative AI. While cultural trade has doubled since 2005, direct public funding remains critically low at under 0.6% of GDP, leaving the sector vulnerable to digital disruption. The report, which monitors data from over 120 countries, highlights a stark “visa wall” where only 38% of developed nations facilitate inward mobility for artists from developing countries.
As digital revenues now represent 35% of creators’ income, the market is increasingly concentrated among a small number of streaming platforms with opaque curation systems. UNESCO emphasizes that without urgent regulatory action to address unauthorized training on intellectual property, the transfer of economic value from human creators to tech companies will continue to widen global inequalities.
Key Pillars of the UNESCO Creative Policy Framework
Digital & AI Sovereignty: Developing targeted policies to mitigate the AI Substitutional Impact by enforcing copyright protection and unlicensed reproduction safeguards.
Sustainable Governance: Scaling inter-ministerial frameworks to move culture from an economic peripheral to a core development strategy.
Balanced Cultural Flow: Implementing preferential treatment for developing nations to bridge the 80% gap in cultural services trade.
Artistic Freedom & Protection: Establishing social security and legal guarantees for artists who face rising violations, digital surveillance, and algorithmic bias.
Inclusive Rights: Promoting gender equality and supporting indigenous creative industries against “cultural homogenization” by recommendation engines.
What is the “AI Substitutional Impact”? The AI substitutional impact refers to the economic process where AI-generated content replaces traditional human-made works in the marketplace. For instance, by 2028, AI-generated music is projected to account for 60% of music library revenues and 20% of traditional streaming income. This creates a “dual threat” for creators: their existing work is used without permission to train the models that eventually compete against them, leading to direct cannibalization of their livelihoods. The impact is most severe for specialized roles; translators and adaptors for dubbing face a potential 56% revenue loss, while screenwriters and directors may see a 20% decline in income.
Impact on Creators: Navigating the 2026 Landscape
For the individual creator, the 2026 policy shift represents a transition from “Precarious Freelancing” to “Formalized Cultural Employment,” but only if local laws can catch up with digital threats.
Economic Precarity: Digital revenues have jumped from 17% to 35% of creator income since 2018, yet this shift is accompanied by high income instability and increased exposure to IP infringements.
The Visa Wall: A persistent physical barrier remains; while 96% of developed countries support outward mobility, they largely restrict inward access for artists from the Global South.
Revenue Cannibalization: Musicians and audiovisual professionals are projected to lose a cumulative €22 billion by 2028 if regulatory frameworks do not mandate transparency and remuneration from AI services.
Skills Divide: A stark “North-South divide” persists in digital literacy, with only 28% of people in developing countries holding essential digital skills compared to 67% in developed ones.
Policy Relevance
For India, the 2026 UNESCO findings represent a transition from “Cultural Promotion” to “Creative Economy Sovereignty,” where protecting the intellectual property of human creators becomes a primary defense against the AI Substitutional Impact.
Protecting “Create in India”: The projected 24% global revenue loss by 2028 serves as a warning for India’s burgeoning AVGC (Animation, Visual Effects, Gaming, and Comics) sector; without a domestic remuneration framework, the economic value of Indian stories could be siphoned by global AI platforms.
Standardizing AI Attribution: Adopting the UNESCO recommendation for transparency mandates acts as a “Standard Maker” move, ensuring that Indian classical and folk arts are not ingested into “untrusted” training sets without fair compensation or attribution.
Operationalizing Artistic Social Security: The report’s focus on precarious work conditions supports the local need to expand the e-Shram portal to include “Cultural Workers,” ensuring that creators displaced by automated translation or dubbing have a socio-economic safety net.
Dismantling the “Visa Wall”: Leveraging the G20/G7 invitations to advocate for Preferential Treatment can help India’s independent artists bypass physical mobility hurdles, allowing them to monetize their work in high-value international festivals and hybrid markets.
Implementation Fidelity via Data: Aligning the Ministry of Culture’s data collection with UNESCO’s monitoring framework ensures that the “Orange Economy” contributions are accurately captured in the revised 2022-23 GDP Base, rather than remaining an unmeasured “informal” asset.
Follow the full report here: RE | SHAPING POLICIES FOR CREATIVITY