Freelancers are getting buried with ‘soulless’ AI slop cleanup: ‘It’s a shame we need to do it’

Freelance designers like Lisa are increasingly hired to fix mistakes in AI-generated content rather than create original work, with AI cleanup now making up the majority of available jobs. As companies adopt AI tools like ChatGPT, they outsource the tedious work of correcting flawed AI outputs (such as sharpening blurry images or fixing broken design files) to freelancers at lower rates, leaving designers exhausted and concerned about copyright issues.