It’s impossible to scroll through Instagram, Threads, to TikTok for more than a couple minutes without landing on a post from a creator who is sharing their favorite ChatGPT prompts or announcing that Claude Cowork is their newest team member. Artificial intelligence has quickly moved from a buzzword to part of many people’s daily workflow, even for creators who job is to, well, create.
According to Epidemic Sound’s “The Future of the Creator Economy Report 2026,” which surveyed 3,000 creators across the US and UK, 94% of are already using AI in some way. Nearly three-quarters of them expect to increase that usage over the next year.
The creators who are using it are utilizing it’s accessibility in many ways too from the 46% of creators who are using it to enhance or market their content to the 44$ who are getting AI’s help to generate ideas or scripts. A smaller but notable 30% are creating fully AI-generated content.
However, what the numbers can’t fully capture is the nuance behind how creators actually think about where in their business AI actually belongs (and where it doesn’t).
A Creator’s Case for AI
For many creators, especially those who are just getting their business off the ground, AI had become the business partner they haven’t been able to budget for yet. Creating content comes off as a lot of fun and glamour, but the reality is a lot of drafting contracts, writing captions and blog posts, formatting captions and content across platforms, etc. The work is time-consuming and leaves little time for the actual content creation that most creators got into the job to do.
Lauren Pickett, a creator who has built a following of 40,000 on Instagram, is clear about where AI earns its place in her workflow. “It’s great for admin, like writing and reviewing contracts,” she says. “I also use AI very high level for creative ideas that I end up refining myself.”
Becky Pierson Davidson, a community podcast creator and the founder of Affinity Collective, has drawn a similar line. The ideas, critical thinking, the voice behind her podcast and newsletter all stay her own.
What she delegates to AI is the downstream labor. “I use the transcripts and my writing with AI to help me create show notes and captions for social posts that I clean up,” she explains, “It’s important that the creative and critical thinking part stays with me.. but I want to decrease my manual low-value workload with it.”
The 82% of creators in Epidemic Sound’s report who say AI enhances creativity when used responsibly would likely recognize themselves in both creator’s approaches: thoughtful usage, clear parameters on what it does for them, and a firm grip on the work that makes them distinctly them.
Where Creators Are Drawing the Line
While creators love having a free or inexpensive “employee” with AI, they still have a complicated relationship with it. The clearest commonality with creators and AI isn’t necessarily resistance to using it, but more so a protective instinct around authorship.
“I would not want to use [AI] for editing or full creative work.. that’s the fun part of what we do and what makes us original,” says Pickett “AI would take that away.”
Creators are also increasingly aware that the same technology helping them produce quicker and run their businesses more efficiently can also be pointed at them. Epidemic Sound’s report found that 93% of creators associate AI with significant risks, including AI-generated content being released without disclosure, their content being used to train AI models without their permission, and AI replicating their voice or style.
These fears aren’t out of the realm of possibility. As tools for replicating voices, faces, and creative styles come to the market and become more sophisticated, the question of consent and ownership in the creator economy gets more urgent (and complicated).
The Environmental and Ethics Battle
As nice as it is to have some easily accessible labor to help running your business, the conversation around AI goes beyond content.
“Artificial intelligence is having detrimental effects on the environment, people’s environment and mental wellbeing, and the economy,” notes Kary Van Collins, a social impact creator with 21,000 followers on Instagram, “Sure, AI can make tasks easier and more efficient, but at what cost?”
Van Collins doesn’t advocate for total abstinence from AI, acknowledging that it would be unrealistic given how deeply AI is embedded into platforms themselves, often without user choice. They occasionally turn to AI for practical tasks like condensing dense scripts or reviewing contract terms, but the boundary is form: “I will never rely on AI to replace my critical thinking and creativity. That feels morally corrupt for several reasons.”
Their position reflects a complicated relationship that creators haven’t been able to fully work through yet. How can creators participate in technological shifts that carry real, detrimental costs, while still running a viable solo business in an industry where AI adoption is quickly becoming the baseline.
Bottom Line
The 94% adoption figure is striking, but it may be less important than what creators are choosing not to hand over. No matter the follower count, niche, or moral stance, the consistent theme is that creators are welcoming AI to assist but not to replace. The creators who are thriving with AI use right now are using it to spend less time on the work that doesn’t require them personally, so that they can spend time on the work that does.
