How to thrive as a freelance writer in the age of AI
Updated 2025-02-23
Historically, freelance writing has been a good career choice for people who love to write and will either enjoy or tolerate the business side of self-employment. In 2025, I reexamined whether freelance writing is still a viable career choice given the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) to generate content.
Henley Wing Chiu from Bloomberry looked at Upwork’s freelancing jobs from November 1, 2022 (a month before ChatGPT was released) to February 14, 2024. He found writing jobs declined 33%. This corroborates anecdotal evidence I hear from writers who say they have experienced situations where an entire team of freelance writers was replaced by one Prompt Engineer / Editor.
Michelle Richmond of The Caffeinated Writer wrote she believes copywriters, content writers, and screenwriters are most at risk of losing their jobs to AI. She observed AI does poorly with specialized content and creative writing, so those areas are less impacted by AI.
In a phone interview, Anne Corning, a Content Manager with extensive experience with technical content, said AI fails at writing anything original where it cannot take material from somewhere else or with complex material where accuracy is essential. Corning said this includes information for very specialized and/or regulated industries like science, healthcare, aerospace, automotive, and legal. Corning also said AI cannot write business material about things not yet documented online, such as prospectus documents for funding or M&A.
Susie Alegre of Wired argued that valueless content is increasingly less tolerated and demand is returning for excellent content that informs or entertains. She wrote, “2025 will be a turning point, not for AI replacing us but for a renewed appreciation of the emotional, spiritual, political, cultural, and ultimately financial value of high-quality human writing.”
If your goal is to thrive as a freelance writer, these resources are among my favorites to learn best practices:
What do you predict will happen in the labor market for freelance writers? Send me your thoughts, and I may include them in this article or a future one.
