The Association of Photographers has published the results of a survey about copyright and the impact of generative AI. Concerningly it shows that 58% of the photographers who responded have lost commissioned wok to generative AI services.
Who is the Association of Photographers?
The Association of Photographers (AOP) is a trade association for professional photographers. Most of the Association’s members come from Great Britain and Europe, however it also has members based globally. In January 2025, the AOP conducted a survey of its members. The survey asked members to consider the impact of visual generative AI upon their profession. Now the AOP repeated the survey to see what the situation is one year on from the original survey.
Work lost to AI
The AOP has around 3,000 professional members. 20% of them responded to the 2026 survey, whoch equates to around 600 members. The headline finding is that 58% of members who responded said that they had lost commissioned work to generative AI services. This figure is actually the same proportion as in the 2025 survey. Importantly however, the corresponding financial losses average out at around £34,900 ($48,000) per person in 2026. This is a dramatic increase of 142% on the average reported losses last year which were around £14,400 ($19,800) per person.
Concerns over AI
The AOP survey also highlighted the concerns that its members have regarding AI. There was a downward trend of photographers making images publicly visible via their websites. The numbers down by almost 50%, averaging 9,000 per person this year versus 14,000 last year. The AOP sees the most likely for this as being concerns about AI illegally scraping the images if they are online.
In addition, the number of commissioned images being licensed by AOP members was down by 65%, from an average of 10,500 per person in 2025 to only 4,800 in 2026.
Compensation and transparency
The AOP survey revealed that 98.4% of members want compensating for the past infringements of their copyright by AI companies. This figure is up 1% from last year. All of the members who responded (100%) also want AI companies to be transparent about using their works. Following on from that, 94.6% of members said they were aware that their photographic style can be replicated and subsequently output by users via their images being uploaded.
Training of AI
85.3% of the AOP members who responded wanted the default position to be an opt-in to allow their images to be used for AI training, rather than having to opt out. 86.8% also said that it would not be feasible to operate an opt-out system for all of their works from all locations. Additionally, 89.9% of AOP members are not interested in licensing their creative works as data for training AI. This is an increase of 5.8% on last year’s survey, so the position of photographers is hardening away from AI.
Copyright protection and labelling
Interestingly, 70.5% of AOP members said that generative AI outputs should not have the same levels of copyright protection as human-authored works. Plus, 96.1% of members believed that there should be mandatory labelled of AI-generated output to show that it was AI.
What we think
For much of the wider public, generative AI is seen as a bit of fun. However, there have long been concerns amongst professionals who make their living from the creative arts. Although the AOP survey relates solely to photography, generative AI will be impacting similarly on videomakers, musicians and writers. The loss of income to those professionals has to be taken seriously, especially given the vast profits that generative AI is expected to reap. Unfortunately, in the rush to create generative AI, human creators are set to be the losers.
