Lisa, a freelance graphic designer living in Spain, has experienced a notable change in her work dynamics since the advent of ChatGPT in 2022. Initially, her projects focused on creating logos and packaging, which came sporadically. However, a surge of requests soon followed, with many clients seeking her expertise to refine AI-generated designs—tasks ranging from enhancing blurry images for printing to converting defective designs into functional files.
By 2025, Lisa, who prefers to keep her full name private to avoid unwanted calls, shared that 90% of her logo and packaging design requests involved polishing AI-generated content, which made up 60% to 70% of her overall earnings. This shift, while lucrative, turned into a taxing endeavor. Some clients offered inadequate compensation, and certain AI-created artworks were so poorly executed that she had to start from scratch, raising concerns about inadvertently contributing to copyright violations. Ultimately, she began to decline such projects, stating, “It was just so soulless.” Now, her focus has shifted back to “human-made designs.”
Lisa's experience mirrors a growing trend among creative freelancers who are tasked with rectifying low-quality AI outputs, often referred to as "AI slop." As businesses increasingly leverage tools like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude for generating marketing materials, illustrations, and videos, they rely on creative professionals to infuse a human touch into AI-generated content, fix subpar visuals, and enhance poor video quality.
This cleanup work acts as a temporary solution for freelancers facing an evolving job landscape, allowing them to boost their income either as their primary vocation or as a side gig. However, clients frequently underestimate the complexity and time required for these tasks, often expecting quick and inexpensive fixes that can rival the effort needed for original creations. While some freelancers find such cleanup gigs tedious and creatively unsatisfying, others embrace the challenge. Nonetheless, as AI technology progresses, many freelancers question the longevity of this demand and what the future holds once these jobs diminish.
Currently, the demand for AI remediation is on the rise. Recent data from Freelancer.com, a platform boasting over 88 million users, shows that job postings labeled with terms like "correct AI," "AI hallucination," and "AI error" jumped by 87%, reaching 10,760 globally between August 2025 and June 2026. Most of these jobs are in graphic design, followed by video editing, content writing, and proofreading. Additionally, Upwork has reported a 70% increase in AI remediation gigs year over year, while Fiverr noted a more than 20-fold rise in searches for "AI cleanup" services from 2023 to 2026.
However, the introduction of AI poses significant challenges for the freelance creative job market. A study published in 2025 revealed that job listings for freelance positions susceptible to automation fell by 21% in the months following the launch of ChatGPT, while gigs related to image creation dipped by 17% after the rollout of AI image generators. These declines have persisted, according to findings from 2026.
As companies reduce staff and hiring slows, more people are turning to freelancing, which has intensified competition within the sector. The average project on Freelancer.com attracted 54 bids in 2025, marking an 8% increase from the previous year, based on the site’s annual report.
Companies cutting costs are shifting the nature of freelance requests from creative original work to enhancing AI outputs. Matt Barrie, CEO of Freelancer.com, noted that many small businesses and entrepreneurs produce initial drafts using AI but often encounter issues they lack the skills to resolve. “AI output requires human intervention to transform it into a polished end product,” he emphasized. While the initial draft may save time and money, the tedious task of making it ready for commercial use can be incredibly time-consuming.
For many freelancers, cleaning up AI outputs is becoming a larger component of their portfolios, while traditional creative opportunities are becoming scarcer. Todd Van Linda, a freelance illustrator from Florida, started accepting AI cleanup projects in 2023 after noticing a decline in steady work related to illustration, video game art, and architectural design. His responsibilities typically involve improving resolution, eliminating visual distractions, and fixing glitches, such as extra limbs in images.
“Money” is Van Linda's primary motivation. Despite clients often expecting lower prices for cleanup compared to original work, he maintains his rates. When a potential client offered $500 to fix 13 to 15 AI-generated illustrations for a children's book—assured each would only take around 15 minutes—he declined, explaining that such projects can take anywhere from a few hours to several days. His hourly rate stands at $65, and he refuses to negotiate it downward.
For Kym Dunbar, an Australian freelance writer and editor, AI-related cleanup constitutes roughly 60% of her workload, a sharp contrast to the dwindling demand for traditional writing tasks such as blogs and website content. This shift has left her monthly earnings from writing original pieces at about a third of what they were during the pandemic. Dunbar began tackling cleanup work in 2024 when a client requested revisions on an AI-generated article. She quickly identified patterns of recurring issues, from awkward phrasing to a lack of emotional depth. Since then, she has worked on approximately 40 AI-generated nonfiction books, longform articles, and technical documents.
“There are significantly fewer quality projects available for writers and editors nowadays,” she lamented.
However, the term “cleanup” can undermine the effort required. Nathan McConnell, a multimedia editor who freelances alongside his full-time job, began editing AI-generated videos in 2023. His work has evolved to involve tasks like removing reflections from AI real estate videos and correcting robotic voiceovers. He notices an increase in requests, moving from just a few projects in 2023 to eight or more in the current year.
One challenging project included repairing around 100 AI-generated images of humanoid animals intended for a tarot deck, which were riddled with errors like extra fingers and misplaced limbs. McConnell anticipated spending two to three hours fixing each image, planning for the entire project to take nearly two weeks. However, after finishing the first set of cards, he abandoned it due to health concerns and frequent changes requested by a demanding client.
Not all submissions are salvageable, he noted, pointing to issues such as illogically animated scenes where physics appear distorted or instances where visual elements infringe on other creators’ works. “I've informed clients that some of the work is just too flawed to fix,” McConnell stated.
While he and Van Linda would prefer to engage in original creative work, not all find AI output remediation dispiriting. Dunbar views it as “interesting” and “challenging,” taking pride in transforming a weak draft into compelling prose. However, she worries that the perception of AI is shifting from a useful tool to a definitive solution for all creative needs.
“I feel it's a real shame that we need to be doing this,” she remarked.
The sustainability of AI cleanup jobs remains uncertain. Dunbar expresses skepticism about their longevity, suggesting that in five to ten years, as AI capability advances, businesses may be able to produce quality content independently, decreasing the need for human intervention.
Conversely, McConnell believes that AI will still necessitate oversight, as there will always be nuances an untrained eye may overlook, such as ensuring that logos conform to brand standards or fixing flawed visual animations. "We still need people to address the problems AI creates," he argued.
Meanwhile, Van Linda is charting a different course. After halting his acceptance of AI cleanup gigs, he has noted an increase in clients seeking original, hand-crafted work, often coming from dissatisfaction with AI outputs. “Quite frankly, I’ve found this work distasteful,” he admitted.
Lisa, the graphic designer, has updated her profiles to indicate she no longer accepts AI-generated projects, yet she still receives requests for editing them. Occasionally, she accommodates cleaning up files for clients who have had disappointing experiences with AI. However, she notes that some clients are disingenuous, claiming their images are not AI-derived while unmistakable AI logos mark the designs.
“They say, ‘I don’t use AI,’ but there's a Google Gemini logo on the bottom,” she described.
To safeguard her future in the industry, Lisa has started revisiting traditional art forms such as watercolors and canvases that she practiced prior to her graphic design career. She anticipates that within “a year or two,” AI might master logo and packaging design to the point where only the most exceptional talents will be able to sustain a career in this evolving landscape. “I wonder if I am skilled enough to compete in the digital realm,” she reflected.
