Work at the Frontier: AI's effect on freelance work

From what I read about the freelancers’ perspective, a lot of the newer gigs they get are to clean up work already done by AI instead of the opportunity to start new like they did in the past.

Maybe I missed it or maybe they are dodging the bigger question: is freelance work and the amount of money paid for it going up or down and by how much?

It sounds like they're mainly saying that there are certain categories of work in which people use AI to handle things themselves (directly via ChatGPT) and other categories for which they still post a freelance listing (especially if it requires skills across multiple domains).

Writing, illustration, and tech support seem to be the categories people handle themselves most often via AI, according to the first graphic... But then the second graphic suggests that the number of freelance postings for a top 'do-it-yourself-with-AI' category like writing is only down about 0.5% year over year. That almost suggests there isn't really an effect. Even the largest-changing category in that graphic, web development, is down only about 2%.

I think I conceptually can agree with their implication that AI allows freelancers to take on more breadth on their own, but the data/graphics they're presenting are confusing me. I'm not sure I get it.

Wow, so cool, I'm sure the world really wants to know OAI's thoughts on freelance work.

I'm just real tired of these companies inserting themselves everywhere. I look forward to when investors realise that their money was just yeeted into the furnace and the budget for this sort of thing evaporates.

Tbh bit of a strange report, would be nice with a concise executive summary at the top. My interpretation: AI may be commoditising individual tasks while increasing demand for people who can combine those tasks into complete deliverables. That’s my whole read with some nuances on the different task shifts.

so 'build me ebay clone for $500" is still not possible. Would be interesting to see how it changed on toptal.