As we head into a new year, we know that members continue to fight for their livelihoods and for their unique human creativity to be supported.

During 2025, the national conversation around tech companies’ unlicensed use of creative works to train their ‘Large Language Models’ progressed significantly with the #MakeItFair campaign, and there is now – at least –a better understanding of what has been taken and what is at risk.

Thank you for all your support during a year in which we lobbied for the protection of your intellectual property and data rights, for the enforcement and upholding of the UK’s gold standard copyright framework and for better author care. The issues surrounding generative AI and copyright are still high on the agenda for 2026, and so we need your support more than ever before.

In the year ahead, we predict UK litigation that seeks injunctive relief and damages for this mass unlicensed commercial use of copyright materials. We will not rest until payment starts flowing to authors and rightsholders, so that they can share in the commercial uses of their works.

If this does not happen, and generative AI deployment continues without transparency, compensation, regulation, licensing and choice, there will be further industry action demanding fairness and equity for creators. Author voices must be heard.

During this fourth industrial revolution, recognising human creativity will be vital. We urgently need the labelling of AI-generated content, but until this happens across all platforms, we will empower authors to help their human authored works stand out. Just as with food labelling, consumers deserve to know what they are buying, what they are feeding their minds.

So, this year we launch an international collaboration with the Authors’ Guild of America with a version of their ‘Human Authored’ scheme. The aim is to have a global mark of human authorship. You can find out more at www.humanauthored.co.uk.

2026 is also the National Year of Reading of course, and so we will be doing our bit to help create readers with lifelong reading habits by partnering with Coram Beanstalk. As they say, ‘Every child needs someone who makes reading feel like magic’ and we hope that you will help us to find 250 reading volunteers to help reading feel like magic.

And to try to ensure there is a sustainable publishing eco-system for this next generation of readers, we will continue to make industry accountable for adopting more climate-friendly practices. We will also lobby for mitigations to be implemented to protect people and planet against the environmental drain of AI data centres.

In the current global political climate, I hope that the UK will lead with tolerance, fairness and equity. I would love to see the publishing industry respond to current political trends with a surge in deals for under-represented voices, lifting up those who are often marginalised and supporting them to share their unique stories. This in turn enables the industry to tap into new audiences who might not currently be catered for.

At the Society of Authors, we will continue lobbying hard for a fairer deal for authors, pressing for fair contracting, fair treatment, and fair pay. I hope you will join us.