A new PYMNTS Intelligence and WorkWhile report published September 25 found that when people need digital or creative help these days, more than half now turn to AI tools before they think about hiring a freelancer. The Wage to Wallet Index surveyed over 2,000 U.S. consumers, including more than 1,600 working adults, about how they earn and spend money on digital platforms.
For freelancers, the finding lands as a warning shot. The work is not disappearing, but the competition for it increasingly comes from a chatbot rather than another human.
What The Report Actually Found
Among people who needed a digital or creative task done, 57.5% said they used AI to handle it themselves, while only 19.1% paid or hired someone. Close to a third of digital freelancers also said the platforms they work through have rolled out AI tools capable of doing parts of their own job.
The report also tracked churn: about 30% of people who did platform-based service work walked away from it within the past year, citing low pay, thin job availability, the time and cost of doing the work, or personal circumstances.
Why This Matters For Self-Employed Freelancers
If your clients can increasingly get a decent first draft from a free or cheap AI tool, the pressure shifts onto you to justify why they should pay a person at all. That pressure hits generic, lower-skill gigs hardest, things like basic copy, simple graphics, or routine data cleanup.
It also means the platforms you rely on for leads may be quietly competing with you. When a marketplace adds its own AI generation tools, it can pull work away from human sellers before a client ever posts a job.
What Self-Employed Freelancers Should Do Next
Look at your service offerings and separate the parts a client could plausibly finish themselves with ChatGPT or a similar tool from the parts that genuinely require your judgment, taste, or relationships. Lean your pitch and your pricing toward the second category.
Consider naming AI directly in your marketing, not as a threat but as something you already use to move faster, so clients see your speed and your expertise as a package rather than picking one or the other. Plenty of solopreneurs are already treating AI as a first draft tool rather than a finished product.
What To Watch Next
Watch whether the freelance platforms you use start advertising their own AI generation features more heavily, since that is often an early sign of where a marketplace plans to compete with its own sellers.
Also keep an eye on how clients react once they hit the limits of do-it-yourself AI work. A wave of clients needing AI drafts fixed could turn into a real business line for freelancers who position themselves as editors and finishers rather than starting from a blank page.
