Fiverr wants gig workers to offload some of their work to AI

Gig marketplace Fiverr wants to let freelancers train AI on their bodies of work and use it to automate future jobs.

At an event on Tuesday, Fiverr announced the launch of several new efforts aimed at attracting gig workers to its platform and equipping them with generative AI tools. Perhaps the most ambitious is a program that’ll give freelancers doing voiceover, graphic design, and certain related work the ability to train AI on their content and to charge customers for access.

Fiverr CEO Micha Kaufman pitched the move as a way to ensure gig workers “receive proper credit and compensation while giving them unprecedented tools to scale their work.”

“This is about making our freelancers irreplaceable, not obsolete,” Kaufman said in a statement. “We built [these new features] to ensure creators remain at the center of the creative economy.”

The gig market has been particularly hard hit by the advent of cheap, widely available generative AI tech. A recent report found that AI tools like image generators and OpenAI’s ChatGPT have led to more competition for fewer roles, with writers, programmers, and app developers suffering the brunt of the negative effects.

These jobs may not return. In an independent, slightly older study looking at gig marketplace movements over a nine-month period, researchers concluded that the trend of replacing freelancers only accelerated over time.

Fiverr’s grand plan to address this is what it’s calling the “Personal AI Creation Model,” which will let contractors configure an AI model trained on their previous work — artwork, say, or code — and set prices to use it. Fiverr says freelancers will retain ownership over work generated by their model, including content like song lyrics, illustrations, marketing copy, and digital advertising designs.

“Buyers have full flexibility to choose between a freelancer’s AI-generated work, human-created work, or a seamless blend of both,” a Fiverr spokesperson told TechCrunch via email. “Customers can instantly pay and download AI-generated assets or ask the freelancer for an additional edit. They can also contact the freelancer of an AI-generated work as a starting point for a project, as an example or inspiration, and ask for a specific service.”

At launch on Wednesday, only “thousands” of “top, vetted” freelancers will be able to create models. Fiverr says it’s using “advanced language models” and “generative frameworks” to drive the capability — which won’t be free. The Personal AI Creation Model costs $25 per month.

Gig workers may not feel they have much of a choice. Opting not to participate could place them at a competitive disadvantage in a sector that’s punishing to begin with. Many gig workers face economic insecurity, have trouble covering expenses and paying bills, and lack the benefits and legal protections afforded to full-time employees.

Fiverr is stressing it won’t use gig worker data to train in-house models (for instance, models that might compete with workers), and that the Personal AI Creation Model can be disabled at any time.

“Creative work and the AI models freelancers train belong to them,” the spokesperson continued. “Fiverr may collect aggregated, anonymized usage data solely to improve platform performance and user experience, but never to replicate or compete with freelancers’ creative work or services […] If a freelancer disables their AI Creation Model, they will have access to any content generated by the model and no one else will have access to it.”

Contractors on Fiverr who use the Personal AI Creation Model will also get access to Fiverr’s “Personal AI Assistant” ($29 per month or included with Fiverr’s Seller Plus Premium plan), which is essentially a customer service chatbot fine-tuned on contractors’ chats with clients. Fiverr says that the assistant, which is customizable, can “provide actionable business insights” and “handle routine tasks,” for example responding on behalf of a contractor when they’re offline.

Given the sensitive nature of some of these interactions, gig workers might be wary of allowing training on them. Fiverr hasn’t said whether users will have control over which specific chats the Personal AI Assistant uses for fine-tuning.

“[The] Personal Assistant analyzes each freelancer’s profile, gigs, and past client communication[s],” the spokesperson said. “Freelancers can review and adjust their Personal Assistant’s responses during the set-up process. After set-up, the freelancer can further configure their Personal Assistant’s behavior by defining specific topics that trigger a hand-off to the freelancer, and can add or remove questions and responses that they’d like the Personal AI Assistant to answer or not answer.”

Complementary to its AI product launches, Fiverr unveiled a program, set to go live Thursday, that it says will give “top-performing” contractors on Fiverr shares in Fiverr the company, which is publicly traded. Fiverr on Tuesday wouldn’t say how awardees will be determined, nor how many shares they can expect to receive — or on what payout cadence.

Fiverr had a market cap of around $1.16 billion as of last Friday. Share performance has been up and down in the past year, but recently, Fiverr’s fortunes took a turn for the better.