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Creative industry workers worry AI is after their jobs
An illustrator, influencer and translator ponder over what role increasingly sophisticated technology will leave to them.
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People walk along a pedestrian bridge in Senen, Central Jakarta, in November 2020. (JP/Wendra Ajistyatama)
A
growing number of creative industry workers has expressed concern about increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) technology leaving them without much to contribute in the office.
While workers in the manufacturing industry have long faced the threat of machines stealing their jobs, automation has more recently become a force to be reckoned with in the service sector, where AI threatens to take over at least some of the work of copywriters, graphic designers, translators and even influencers.
Graphic designers Bima Satrian and Neysa Vania, one based in Surabaya, the other in Jakarta, expressed concern regarding the unauthorized use of copyrighted images by AI applications when speaking to The Jakarta Post on April 19.
They believe this not only violates designers’ rights but also diminishes the value of human-made artwork in the eyes of potential clients.
“Using AI for clients offers significant advantages in terms of speed and efficiency. By contrast, creating manual or digital illustrations can be time-consuming, typically requiring around a week to complete a single image. However, with AI, the process is remarkably swift, with results ready in less than a minute,” Bima said.
Sometimes, Bima said, customers would give him a mock-up created by AI to show what they were looking for. While an AI creation is far from the final product, having an illustration put in front of them by the client before even starting to work on a project is a sobering experience for a designer.
As a harbinger of what lies ahead, Bima says, AI support for his work is a double-edged sword: “If this [AI] is not properly regulated, there is a concern about the potential impact in the future. As technology advances, there is a possibility that AI could replace not only illustrators but also copywriters in their jobs.”
