Thread by @zemotion

Indies using AI will impact more jobs than you think. Let’s discuss 3 scenarios:

In illustration, many junior-mid lvl artists make a living freelancing w/ indie authors, publishers, tabletop games, musicians. The pay is limited, but it’s a living. And AI is taking that away: 1/

To simplify, say a picture book pays $100/page x 12pgs. Artist takes 3 days per page, project takes 1.5-2mths. They earn $1.2k & pay some rent. If all indie author/creator decide to generate images, gigs dry up. Tens of thousands of artists in this market go out of work. 2/

You might say, then get new job training for these tens of thousands of ppl—ok, sure, but these aren’t the only people affected.

Let’s look at scenario 2, where even more people are impacted in a project that gets automated—photography. 3/

I’ll talk about higher end photo productions, cuz that’s what will replace smaller creators. You’ll see why in a moment.

In these productions, smaller photoshoots can hire between 10-15 people, bigger projects can be 40+. My projects fall between 15-40. 4/

I spend a lot of my time producing, and I know regardless of commercial or personal work, I spend the same amount of time working. So I don’t take private commissions cuz I don’t have more time, bandwidth, or want to work at a discount. But AI can change that, IF I wanted. 4/

IF I wanted to, I could build an AI photography pipeline. People who wanted my name on their pictures and couldn’t before, can now start purchasing AI photoshoots “from the studio of Jingna Zhang”. 5/

Let’s say 1k AI shoots are sold a year. This means removing 1k gigs from other portrait photographers. But not only them. It also means -1k makeup artists, -1k hair stylists, -1k stylists, -2~3k assistants, -1k producers, set designers, food biz you get lunch at, per year. 6/

It might create jobs for 3-5 part timers who will help run these programs & reply to emails to keep up with demand. But the price of this one indie creator using gen AI has the power to eliminate 6-10k gigs from the market. Just one person. 7/

So in a limited scenario of just these 2 small industries, people are going to bleed jobs en masse. And they can’t get job training for something else, cuz it’s going to be the same everywhere—every industry will shed more jobs than what will be created. 8/

Like illustration, the impact of AI in photo will land on young & mid-career workers most.

So many established artists are not doing the example I gave above but are instead speaking up because we don’t want to see our craft go extinct, or the next gen have nowhere to go. 9/

So when I see people say “gen AI will benefit indies”, I call bullshit. It’s really just saying to me, “I don’t want to pay workers & I only care about myself.”

You CAN just care about yourself if you want! But don’t pretend it’s a benefit when it has real power to cause harm.