AI both aids and threatens creative freelancers as content generation becomes DIY

The rise of generative AI has created a paradoxical relationship for creative professionals, who simultaneously benefit from its capabilities while facing disruption to traditional income streams. David Neal’s personal experience illustrates this tension, highlighting how AI tools have enhanced his creative process while dramatically reducing demand for his illustration side hustle. This evolving dynamic mirrors historical patterns where technological innovation has both eliminated traditional crafts and opened entirely new creative possibilities.

The big picture: A creative professional who works across software, content, illustrations, and music experiences both love and hate for generative AI based on its contradictory impacts on his work and livelihood.

• Neal embraces how AI tools have unlocked greater creativity, ideas, and productivity in his professional life, particularly helping him overcome creative blocks.
• Simultaneously, he reports that his illustration side business has dropped by more than 50% in the last 12 months, directly attributable to generative AI alternatives.

Why this matters: The personal testimony demonstrates the complex reality of AI adoption, where the same technology that empowers creators also threatens their economic foundation.

• While Neal’s illustration work never provided full-time income, it represented meaningful “fun money” for his family’s hobbies and travel, plus personal fulfillment from a craft he deeply enjoys.
• His experience exemplifies the larger economic disruption affecting creative industries where AI can now satisfy consumer curiosity and provide entertainment value that previously required hiring an artist.

The historical context: Neal acknowledges that this creative skills transition follows historical patterns of innovation eliminating traditional craftsmanship.

• He recognizes that without financial incentives, future generations may not develop the same creative skills that he acquired before AI tools were available.
• Despite this loss, he remains optimistic that people will discover entirely new forms of creativity enabled by AI tools, eventually reaching a point where we wonder how we lived without them.

Reading between the lines: Neal’s alternating statements of “I love generative AI” and “I hate generative AI” throughout the piece deliberately highlight the ambivalence many creative professionals feel toward these tools.

• This rhetorical device effectively communicates how AI can simultaneously be both beneficial and harmful to the same person, depending on which aspect of their work and life is being considered.
• The mixed feelings reflect broader societal tensions about technological progress that delivers convenience and capability while disrupting established economic systems and cultural practices.