Who Is AI Replacing? The Impact of Generative AI on Online Freelancing Platforms

This paper studies the impact of generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies on the demand for online freelancers using a large data set from a leading global freelancing platform. We identify the types of jobs that are more affected by generative AI and quantify the magnitude of the heterogeneous impact. Our findings indicate a 21% decrease in the number of job posts for automation-prone jobs related to writing and coding compared with jobs requiring manual-intensive skills within eight months after the introduction of ChatGPT. We show that the reduction in the number of job posts increases competition among freelancers, whereas the remaining automation-prone jobs are of greater complexity and offer higher pay. We also find that the introduction of image-generating AI technologies led to a 17% decrease in the number of job posts related to image creation. We use Google Trends to show that the more pronounced decline in the demand for freelancers within automation-prone jobs correlates with their higher public awareness of ChatGPT’s substitutability.

This paper was accepted by Duncan Simester, marketing.

Supplemental Material: The online appendices and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2024.05420.