Four UK collecting societies — ALCS, BECS, DACS, and PICSEL — have published a joint letter responding to Anthropic's pledge of 5% of its shares for the "public good." Their argument is structural, not sentimental: before AI companies distribute philanthropic gestures, they should pay the creators whose work trains their models and sustains device ecosystems. The letter centers on a specific policy proposal: the Smart Fund, a private-copying levy on smartphones, computers, and other devices capable of copying or storing creative work. Over 40 countries already operate some version of this mechanism. The UK does not. The proposed levy would require manufacturers and importers to make modest per-device contributions, potentially raising up to £300M annually. The financial case is stark. Visual artists report median annual earnings of £12,500 — down 47% in real terms since 2010. Authors earn a median of £7,000 from writing, collapsed from £11,300 according to surveys published between 2018 and 2022. Audiovisual performers report median annual earnings from performing of £17,500. These are the people whose output populates the devices and trains the models. The letter identifies two distinct extraction channels. First, AI companies like Anthropic ingest creative work to build commercial products without compensating creators. Second, device manufacturers profit from hardware whose value proposition depends on access to creative content, yet pass nothing back to the people who make that content worth accessing. The Smart Fund addresses the second channel; the first remains an open wound. The political context matters. Anthropic's 5% share pledge — the trigger for this letter — is a corporate governance gesture, not a compensation mechanism. Share pledges are discretionary, reversible, and controlled by the company. A statutory device levy, by contrast, creates a durable legal obligation. The collecting societies are drawing a clear line between charity and entitlement. The underlying dynamic is familiar across the digital economy: platforms and hardware makers capture value from a content layer they did not create, while the creators of that content see incomes collapse. The Smart Fund is a modest corrective — £300M across the entire UK creative sector is not transformative — but it establishes a principle that device-enabled copying generates an obligation to compensate. Whether the UK government acts depends on whether it treats creator compensation as an industrial policy priority or a cultural nicety. The letter's real force is in framing: this is not about charity, goodwill, or corporate pledges. It is about who captures value from creative labor and whether any of it flows back.
