According to a deep survey released by Anthropic, based on its new AI research tool "Anthropic Interviewer," creative professionals are significantly benefiting from AI tools, but this increase in efficiency comes with substantial social costs and economic anxiety. The survey found that many creative workers choose to hide their use of AI from colleagues to avoid discrimination and bias, and there is a general pessimism about unemployment.

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 Efficiency Revolution: Creative Industry Benefits the Most, but Social Bias Is Widespread

Anthropic used its automated interview tool to survey 1,250 professionals, including 125 creative professionals. The data shows that AI has had a very positive impact on the creative industry:

  • 97% of creative respondents said AI saved them time.

  • 68% believed AI improved the quality of their work.

  • A content writer said their daily output increased from 2,000 words to more than 5,000 words; a photographer's delivery cycle was reduced from 12 weeks to 3 weeks.

However, this productivity boost comes at a cost. As many as 70% of creative professionals reported experiencing discrimination from colleagues. This "concealment" phenomenon is also widespread among regular employees, with 69% of respondents saying they felt social discrimination when using AI. A fact-checker said he would not tell anyone about his AI workflow to avoid negative perceptions from colleagues.

 Survival Anxiety: Threat of Unemployment and Unclear Authorship

For creative professionals, economic and survival issues are repeatedly mentioned. They are generally concerned about:

  • Risk of unemployment: A voice actor pointed out that the rise of AI has already led to the "near extinction" of certain voice-over fields.

  • Market saturation: A composer worries that platforms may use AI to generate endless cheap music, flooding the market with alternatives completely different from human creations.

  • Loss of creative control: Although all interviewed creative professionals want to maintain control over their work, in practice, many admit that AI is now driving creative decisions. An artist confessed, "60% of it comes from artificial intelligence, 40% from my own ideas."

  • Ethical dilemmas: A creative director frankly said, "I fully understand that my profits come at the expense of other creative professionals' losses. I used to pay that product photographer $2,000 a day, and I won't work with him anymore."

 Scientists Focus on Reliability, General Employees Prefer Collaboration

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Compared to other groups, scientists have different needs. They mainly use AI for literature reviews and programming, but they cannot trust AI to handle core research tasks such as generating hypotheses or running experiments. An information security researcher said that if they had to check every detail provided by AI repeatedly, they would lose the purpose of using AI. Nevertheless, 91% of scientists still hope to have an AI that acts as a "valuable research partner."

In the group of regular employees, 65% of respondents believe that AI's role is enhanced collaboration. However, Anthropic's previous analysis of actual usage of Claude showed that automation (49%) and enhancement (47%) are almost equally used, indicating that users may perceive interactions as more collaborative than they actually are.