OLiver Fiegel, a 47 -year -old photographer based in Munich, recently read a German national Sunday newspaper when he saw a first -page image that looked strangely. The image showed a boy to continue a football on a field. But some of the wild flowers of the grass floated without stems. Half of the goal net was missing. The boy’s hands were misshapen.
In previous years, many Fiegel photography customers had been newspapers and magazines. But this work has dried recently. This image, according to him, has shown a reason why: “generative illustration,” said the legend provided.
Fiegel was frustrated: the use of artificial intelligence instead of a human creation symbolized the way in which his profession, on which he had spent years training, was undermined and erased by the advent of AI generative tools which were cheaper and faster, felt, but often with worse results.
“AI had the most devastating effect on industry,” said Fiegel, one of the dozens of people who revealed Observer How the rise in generative AI tools changes its professional life – for better or for worse – in the midst of seismic economic changes. “It happens very quickly.”
Fiegel, who has been a photographer for about 18 years, said that he could no longer earn a living and had been forced to radically diversify his income flows. Now he plans to open a natural wine bar instead.
For advanced savings such as the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States, around 60% of jobs are exposed to AI, an international study of the monetary fund ended last year, with around half of them potentially negatively affected. In the United Kingdom alone, AI could move up to 3m from the private sector jobs, according to the Tony Blair Institute for Global changes, although certain job losses can be offset by new roles in a modified economy.
“I only know a few photographers who can still live in this job,” said Fiegel. “It is not easy – I identified myself as creative all my life.”
Since 1994, Karl Kerner has worked as a translator – between English, German and Norwegian – focusing on non -fictional scientific texts. This type of translation, he said, required specialized knowledge and meticulous terminology.
“I am now mainly bankrupt,” said Kerner. “This AI came like a tsunami.” In the midst of the overvoltage of translation and publishing tools led by AI in recent years, “the number of [work] Requests have just decreased, “he added.
The loss of his identity had a huge impact, said Kerner, born in New York and now lives in Tønsberg, Norway. “Obviously, all these linguistic culture stuff is worthless, really. It does something to you, because it was who were professionally. [It’s like] Someone takes the carpet under you.
Kerner, 64, started working for an agricultural consulting firm. “It’s not a good age to be on the job market-it’s not easy,” he said.
But technology also helps him with the few translation jobs he still gets. Instead of translating word by word, he can feed a text in automated translation software, then use his knowledge to eliminate inaccuracies and translation errors, which considerably reduces working time. “I am not a technophobic-I find it fascinating,” he said.
Other workers have had more positive experience when they integrate AI in their daily work.
Alexander Calvey, an independent premises GP in Surrey, said that using an AI scribe to write his notes had saved him time and improved their quality. The results mean that it is capable of “focusing more on the patient than on notes”.
Calvey, who also works for a supplier of private general practitioners, added that he had managed to increase The number of patients he sees, in some cases four to five per hour. In the future, as technology improves, estimates Calvey, AI will have other uses to guide interrogations and treatment.
The chatbot chatgpt has become a resonance box for Paul, a 44 -year -old university researcher on mathematics and philosophy based in Stockholm. He said the tool was useful to summarize literature and think about research issues.
“He knows a little about it-he knows other things that people have made that I have no idea”, allowing him to look for these more in-depth subjects, he said.
But professional work is not the only thing that Paul uses Chatgpt. He also uses it for personal tasks, like offering him an analysis if he experiences a strange dream.
Despite this feature, he is concerned about the amount of information that companies controlling the tools of generators learn about their users. He said he was “very concerned” by “the power of some business technology giants”.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he wanted AI to be “kept in the veins” of the nation to stimulate productivity and economic growth. But this month, the TUC called for an urgent government action to protect workers from creative industries in the midst of disturbances and risks of job loss.
For Jenny Turner, an independent 33-year-old illustrator in northeast England, the drop in commissions’ demand was “very sudden” and coincided with the proliferation of IA image tools. Turner previously sold work via Etsy. She would charge, for example, about £ 100 for a colorful portrait and drawn in pencil. But in the past two years, she has started to see images generated by AI below her work in the “You can love” section, with prices less than £ 10.
“I can no longer compete … It is sold at a price at which I could never fall,” she said. “He struck me very hard, made me feel a little empty, as if you had wasted everything – it’s just overwhelming, and that makes you angry.”
Turner said that, after having drawn since her childhood and her studies at Art College, then at university, she had now struck off her illustrations on Etsy and had been forced to consider other lines of work. “If that happens in everything,” she said, “how many people will not have a job?”
