<
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/sep/02/ai-jobs-freelance-cleanup>
"Lisa, a freelance graphic designer based in Spain, noticed a shift in her work
after the release of ChatGPT in 2022. She went from receiving slow one-off jobs
creating logos and packaging to an onslaught of requests asking her to fix
versions that were generated by artificial intelligence – from sharpening fuzzy
images for printing to turning flawed designs into usable files.
By 2025, Lisa, who asked not to be fully named to avoid solicitations, said 90%
of her incoming logo and packaging design requests required cleaning up
AI-generated content, work that accounted for 60% to 70% of her annual income.
But the grind was exhausting. Clients lowballed her;' some AI-generated designs
were so flawed that she had to recreate them from scratch and she worried about
being complicit in AI-driven copyright infringement. By the end of the year,
she began turning those jobs down.
“It was just so soulless,” said Lisa, who now focuses on “human-made designs”.
Lisa is part of a growing group of creative freelancers being hired to clean up
AI slop, a term used to characterize low-quality, AI-generated output. As
businesses use tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude to produce
marketing copy, illustrations, books and videos, they are hiring creative
professionals to humanize AI-generated copy, repair botched images and salvage
flawed footage.
The work serves as a stopgap in an increasingly challenging job market,
supplementing income for those who freelance full-time or on the side. But
clients often underestimate the time and skill involved, expecting cleanup to
be quick and cheap when it can require as much work as creating something
original, freelancers said. And while the high volume of cleanup gigs can be
lucrative, freelancers are divided over the trade-off. Some find it tedious and
creatively unfulfilling, while others enjoy the challenge. As AI improves,
freelancers question how long the demand will last and where they’ll turn once
the jobs dry up.
For now, demand for AI cleanup work is growing."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
