A new niche of temporary work is growing in the freelance industry: people get paid to fix images, text, and code generated by artificial intelligence. Experts fix flaws and make AI content better.
A new niche of temporary work is growing in the freelance industry: people get paid to fix images, text, and code generated by artificial intelligence. Experts fix flaws and make AI content better.
Futurism reports that Lisa Carstens, a long-time designer who freelances to fix AI-generated logos, many of which have blurry lines and distorted text, now makes up a significant portion of her work.
«There are people who realize that AI is not perfect, and there are people who come to you angry because they couldn’t do it on their own with AI. And you have to be compassionate. You don’t want them to feel like idiots. Then you have to fix that,» Carstens said.
According to the designer, sometimes the logos are designed well enough that she doesn’t have to work hard to get them right. But sometimes the images need to be completely redrawn, and companies require the result to match the contours of the original AI-generated version. This often takes longer than if Carstens had simply created the design herself.
It’s not just artists who have this kind of work. Kisha Richardson, a freelance writer by profession, has started editing texts written by AI.
«I have colleagues who absolutely refuse to work with AI. But I say, ‘I need the money. I’m taking [the orders],’» Richardson said.
She said that half of her current assignments involve rewriting AI-generated texts, most of which «are not at all human-like.» In addition to correcting typical AI traits like excessive hyphenation and commonly used phrases like «to delve into» and «to dive deep,» the writer also has to do her own research to fix even what is nominally readable, since chatbots tend not to explain things in sufficient detail.
Richardson points out that companies pay less to proofread texts created by artificial intelligence because they believe it is easier and takes less time, although in reality it often requires as much mental effort as writing the content yourself.
At the same time, companies spend less on the services of freelance fixers than they would pay full-time employees.
«I’m a little concerned that people are using AI to cut costs, and one of those costs is my salary. But at the same time, they’re finding that they really can’t do without people. They’re not getting the content they want from AI, so hopefully we’ll last a little longer,» Richardson said.
Indian app and website developer Harsh Kumar said he’s seeing more and more clients ditching Vybcoding in favor of regular programmers. He says some companies started doing this after hiring him to fix broken projects.
The cases range from fixing a company’s chatbot that gave inaccurate answers and exposed system details, to rebuilding an AI-based content recommendation feature that also gave poor summaries and exposed sensitive data.
«I still believe that long-term projects will require humans. After all, humans developed artificial intelligence,» Kumar believes.
Earlier, Gemini, Google’s AI chatbot, started throwing ashes on its head again when it failed to cope with programming tasks. The AI suggested that the user find a freelancer on Upwork and send the chatbot an invoice for their services.
