Council for Culture calls for content levy on generative AI to compensate creators

The Council for Culture wants providers of generative AI that are active on the Dutch market to pay a statutory content levy. The proceeds are to go to creators in the cultural and creative sector whose work has been used to train AI models. The advisory, titled Kunstzinnig boven kunstmatig, naar een waardengedreven toepassing van AI voor de culturele en creatieve sector (Artistic above Artificial: Towards a Values-Driven Application of AI for the Cultural and Creative Sector), was presented in The Hague on 29 June 2026.

This is an unsolicited advisory, drawn up by a committee chaired by Martijn van der Steen. The committee further consisted of Abdelhadi Baaddi, Danielle Arets, Martin Senftleben, Tom van de Wetering and Wike Been. Council chair Kristel Baele presented the advisory on behalf of the council. The advisory process began around June 2025 and focused on the consequences of AI for the cultural sector.

The immediate reason is concrete: AI models are trained on large volumes of cultural data produced by creative makers, while those creators themselves receive no remuneration for that use. At the same time, the council notes that generative AI is leading to fewer commissions for a portion of creators.

How the levy would work

According to the advisory, the levy becomes due at the point when a fully developed AI system draws on knowledge acquired during the training phase to produce content. The council proposes collecting the levy directly in the Netherlands, without the need for intervention by foreign jurisdictions.

The distribution of proceeds would run through existing collective management organisations, such as BumaStemra for music and Pictoright for visual arts. The precise distribution key has not yet been determined; the council acknowledges that this requires further elaboration. The level of remuneration will depend on that still-to-be-developed key.

The choice of collective management organisations aligns with established practices in copyright law, where comparable mechanisms already apply to, among other things, reprography and lending rights. For the AI context, such a system is still new and requires additional legislation.

Broader recommendations to government

The content levy is not the only measure the council proposes. The advisory contains a series of recommendations that together are intended to form a more active government policy on AI and culture.

• A stimulus programme under the name Naar een Europese AI-cultuur (Towards a European AI Culture), aimed at developing public alternatives to existing AI technology.
• The appointment of a government commissioner for AI, tasked with contributing to coherent policy across ministries.
• A societal taskforce on AI and culture, which would gather signals from the sector and relay them to government.

Underlying these recommendations is a broader concern: according to the council, the development of AI is largely in the hands of a small number of predominantly American companies with a primarily commercial focus. The council wants public values, such as accessibility of culture and fair remuneration of creators, to be structurally safeguarded in the way AI is developed and applied.

European context

The Council for Culture is not alone in this thinking. The European Parliament has previously called for fair compensation for the use of creative work in AI systems. The AI Act, which entered into force in 2025, imposes transparency requirements on providers of AI models regarding the training data used, but does not include mandatory compensation mechanisms for creators.

A statutory levy of the kind the council proposes would need to be introduced nationally in the Netherlands. At the same time, such a measure touches on the internal market and the European copyright framework, meaning that alignment at EU level is likely necessary for a durable arrangement.

For the Dutch and European AI sector, this advisory is a signal that political and societal pressure to compensate creators is increasing. Investors and providers of generative AI services operating in the European market are seeing the regulatory landscape gradually take further shape. Whether and how quickly a content levy will be given legislative form depends on the willingness of Dutch politics to adopt the advisory and on the extent to which a national arrangement is sustainable within the European legal framework.