Co-Designing Collaborative Generative AI Tools for Freelancers

TL;DR

This paper explores designing collaborative generative AI tools tailored for freelancers, emphasizing preserving creative agency and identity through co-design sessions and proposing auxiliary AI systems that support flexible, freelancer-led collaboration.

Contribution

It introduces a co-design approach with freelancers to develop AI tools that support collaboration, emphasizing human-guided auxiliary AI to preserve creative agency and resist efficiency-driven AI models.

Findings

Freelancers are concerned about AI compromising their creative identity.

Auxiliary AI systems can support flexible, freelancer-led collaboration.

Design recommendations promote preserving creative agency in AI tools.

Abstract

Most generative AI tools prioritize individual productivity and personalization, with limited support for collaboration. Designed for traditional workplaces, these tools do not fit freelancers' short-term teams or lack of shared institutional support, which can worsen their isolation and overlook freelancing platform dynamics. This mismatch means that, instead of empowering freelancers, current generative AI tools could reinforce existing precarity and make freelancer collaboration harder. To investigate how to design generative AI tools to support freelancer collaboration, we conducted co-design sessions with 27 freelancers. A key concern that emerged was the risk of AI systems compromising their creative agency and work identities when collaborating, especially when AI tools could reproduce content without attribution, threatening the authenticity and distinctiveness of their collaborative work. Freelancers proposed "auxiliary AI" systems, human-guided tools that support their creative agencies and identities, allowing for flexible freelancer-led collaborations that promote "productive friction". Drawing on Marcuse's concept of technological rationality, we argue that freelancers are resisting one-dimensional, efficiency-driven AI, and instead envisioning technologies that preserve their collective creative agencies. We conclude with design recommendations for collaborative generative AI tools for freelancers.