Surprise, surprise: the data shows the impact of ChatGPT on the creative professions
Two professors from Washington University and one from NYU have pre-published in the SSRN repository one of the first studies on the impact of ChatGPT, which joins another from last month by several Harvard professors on the productivity of Boston Consulting Group consultants using ChatGPT.
The study’s conclusions are hardly surprising, but which someone had to provide concrete data for, and that’s what we academics are for: the introduction of the ChatGPT generative algorithm a year ago has had significant negative effects on creative professions such as graphic designers and copywriters.
Using data from copywriters and graphic designers on the freelancing platform Upwork, the researchers found that these professionals not only experienced a significant drop in the number of jobs they could bid for, but even steeper drops in earnings, suggesting not only that generative AI is taking away their jobs, but that it tends to devalue the dwindling volume of work they still do.
The case of copywriters and graphic designers is particularly interesting because it illustrates the phenomenon of direct substitution: the work that someone used to request from one of these professionals, even considering the possible iterations until a satisfactory result was…
