The AI revolution is here — and a 22-year-old copywriter is its latest victim.
Sharanya Battacharya was once a ghostwriter and copywriter for a creative solutions agency while pursuing her degree, picking up a few SEO-optimized articles each week and earning just over $240 a month.
That is, until ChatGPT came into the picture.
By late 2022, Battacharya’s workload dwindled and was eventually reduced to writing just one or two pieces per month, claiming that companies who used to commission her work began to rely on AI.
She said the companies gave “no explanation” for the lack of work, but suspects the introduction of ChatGPT was to cut costs.
“It has been really tough since the reduction in my workload — not just for me but my family, too,” the Kolkata, India, student told SWNS. “I can hardly make 10% of what I used to make.”
Her income supports both her and her mother, Bandana, 45, who sells sarees.
As the cash flow slowed, the pair suddenly had to “cut back” on living expenses, which has “been extremely rough.”
“We’ve had to monitor how much food we consume, and we no longer do things we used to enjoy doing like going out to eat — we can only do that once every couple of months now,” said Bhattacharya, a postgraduate biologic science student at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research.
“We’ve had to focus our money on the necessities, like food and bills, to make sure we can live fine.”
Now, her life is “extremely uncertain” as she faces potential unemployment in a “cutthroat” job market for copywriters.
“This is how I earn my living whilst also studying, I was devastated when I started receiving less and less work,” she explained. “I have been anxious, feeling lost, having panic attacks, it has not been a very good past couple of months for me.”
She urged companies to consider who is affected by mass job cuts, highlighting the “huge difference” between human-produced work and AI-generated content.
“There are a lot of good copywriters not just in India but around the world that are being affected by this,” she said.
She added, “I hope there will be a way in the future where humans can incorporate AI with their copyrighting skills to work together to yield overall, better results.”
But Bhattacharya isn’t alone in her outcry against AI.
This month, Adobe employees voiced concerns over the company’s design tools, fearing that the AI utilization could result in job loss.
Their unease follows a June report from the consulting firm McKinsey revealed that the introduction of artificial intelligence in the workforce will result in a job shakeup, especially for “higher-wage knowledge workers.”
