Creators are not free fuel.

Creators are not free fuel

Let’s be clear about what is happening:

• Your posts, articles, videos, and images are not just “content”. They are assets.
• Your interactions, interests, and professional data are not just “signals”. They are inputs to billion-pound products.
• Your collective work is not just “user activity”. It is the foundation of the digital and AI economy.

When platforms and AI companies use your work to sell advertising and subscriptions, train commercial AI models, or power enterprise tools and analytics, they are extracting real economic value from your labour and your rights.

Under current law, you own the copyright in your original work. Under current contracts, you grant broad, royalty-free licences that were never designed for this scale of commercial exploitation.

That imbalance is not an accident. It is a design choice. And design choices can be changed.

Why Digital Creators Union exists

Digital Creators Union (DCU) exists to correct that imbalance.

We are building a creator-led licensing initiative for the age of AI. It will focus on rights that members own or control, with clear mandates and transparent terms.

Our ambition is clear:

• Ensure creators are paid when their work is used commercially.
• Negotiate fair licences and revenue share on behalf of creators, collectively.
• Defend and advance creators’ economic and moral rights.
• Build a sustainable, transparent institution that creators can trust and own.

This is not about shutting down platforms or stopping AI. It is about ensuring the economy built on our work includes us as partners, not just as raw material.

Our model: collective power, individual rights

Individually, a creator has little leverage against a global platform or an AI lab. Together, we have something they cannot ignore: scale, legitimacy, and rights.

We are starting in the UK, where we can build the model with UK creators, regulators, and companies. Once proven, we will expand with national chapters under a global DCU umbrella.

This is about more than money

Yes, this is about fair pay. Creators deserve a share of the value they generate.

But it is also about dignity, agency, and power.

• Dignity: to be recognised as workers and rights-holders, not “users” or “data points”.
• Agency: to have a real say in how our work is used, especially in AI systems.
• Power: to stand together and shift the terms of trade in the digital economy.

That future is not inevitable. It is a choice. We choose differently.

Who this is for

DCU is for every creator who has ever felt that their work is valued more by algorithms than by the systems that profit from it; that terms of service are a one-way street; or that the AI revolution is being built on their labour with little regard for their rights.

It is for writers and journalists, video creators and educators, social creators, B2B experts and consultants. If you create, publish, or teach online, this union is for you.

Our promise to you

As founder of DCU, my promise is this:

• We will be bold in defending creators’ rights, but rigorous in our legal and economic arguments.
• We will be transparent about our governance, finances, and deals.
• We will be accountable to our members, not to platforms, investors, or AI companies.
• We will build an institution that outlives any of us - a permanent seat at the table for creators.

We are not asking for permission. We are asserting a right: the right to be paid for the value we create.

The next chapter of the creator economy

The first chapter was about access: anyone could publish, build an audience, or “be a creator”.

The next chapter must be about ownership and fair value. Creators must own their rights, licence their work on fair terms, and share in the value their labour generates.