Work at the Frontier: AI’s effect on freelance work

Why we study freelance work

For freelancers, changes in the market arrive one assignment at a time: a client needs a different service, requests a new skill or expands a project’s scope. Our new research with Upwork offers an early view of these changes in the AI era. Some familiar services are losing market share, while AI-related projects bring together different capabilities—and involve larger budgets and more hours of work.

The stakes are substantial. Upwork’s 2026 Future Workforce Index⁠(opens in a new window) found that 38% of skilled U.S. knowledge workers freelance. Its previous annual study⁠(opens in a new window) estimated that freelance knowledge work generated $1.5 trillion in U.S. earnings in 2024. Those estimates extend well beyond Upwork’s own marketplace.

Freelance work can also reveal changes sooner than economy-wide employment statistics. Contracts are often short, and clients can adjust their requirements with each posting. To get to the root of these changes, we partnered with Upwork, an online marketplace connecting clients and freelancers, to study those requests alongside the activities people undertake directly with ChatGPT.

What people use ChatGPT for vs. freelancers

The mix of work differed across the two platforms. Writing accounted for a much larger share of ChatGPT use, while video and animation accounted for larger shares of requests for freelancers in Upwork postings. 

Below are the ranges of tasks between the two platforms. 

Freelance demand is shifting as AI use grows

Many activities that were relatively common in ChatGPT lost share on Upwork, while less common activities gained share. Of the 63 work categories analyzed, 43 followed this pattern. 

The remaining 20 work categories showed the reverse. ChatGPT use alone does not explain changes in freelance demand.

The comparison also captures how people currently use ChatGPT, not the full range of tasks AI can support—a gap OpenAI calls the capability overhang.