California’s Creative Job Losses Aren’t AI Casualties

BY KATIE KILKENNY The Hollywood Reporter

The rapid development of the tech isn’t displacing workers but it is changing the nature of creative work in the state, according to the latest research from Otis College of Art and Design.

Industry insiders know the story all too well.

Over the last few years, as Hollywood restructured to meet the demand for streaming entertainment and as major businesses saw fit to merge, the entertainment industry whittled down budgets, shed jobs and in some cases outsourced work overseas. This painful moment of contraction happened to coincide with leaps forward in generative AI like the release of ChatGPT in 2022, the same year that Netflix, and the rest of Hollywood, began shifting their streaming models to focus on profitability.

But don’t blame generative AI for the devastating recent shrinkage in California’s creative workforce, says the latest report from the L.A.-based Otis College of Art and Design, which produces research annually encompassing the state’s film, fashion, gaming, media, advertising, arts and architecture industries.

“The pattern of job loss in terms of the types of jobs that are being lost and when they’re being lost does not support the fact that there’s been this displacement of workers by AI,” says the co-author of this year’s research Patrick Adler, a founding partner of Westwood Economics and Planning Consultants. “What we do find is that AI has, in the creative economy, dramatically changed how work is being done.”

The Hollywood Reporter viewed the 2026 report, titled “Creative Disruption: AI and California’s Creative Economy: 2022–2025,” before its release on April 7. The research was developed by Otis College of Art and Design in partnership with Westwood Economics and Planning Consultants. In addition to Adler, Taner Osman co-authored the report, which used public data to produce quantitative analyses and interviews with creative professionals to produce qualitative assessments.