She has always had two steady sources of income – a job with a game design company and freelancing for publishing houses. She typically earns between VND250,000 (US$9.84) and VND1.5 million per project, depending on the complexity. International publishers offered a fixed rate of US$45 per design.
But as her clients shifted to AI, her work began to reduce. “It feels like my livelihood is being taken away,” she says, reflecting on how clients, drawn by AI’s speed and lower costs, no longer need her services.
In search of opportunities, she approached several companies, only to be rejected either due to financial constraints or lack of demand. One company was candid, telling her that though AI did not match human artists in terms of design quality, it was faster, offered more creative suggestions and, importantly, saved significantly on costs.
The pressure grew when her own employer, the game design company, began hiring artists skilled in AI. The management even encouraged staff to adopt the technology to accelerate project timelines.
After discussing the impact of AI with her colleagues in the design industry, she realized that her situation was not unique. “Many graphic designers have either lost their jobs or are kept on in limited roles, mainly to provide ideas or refine AI-generated designs,” she says.
Ka Nguyen in a Ho Chi Minh City studio, December 2023. Photo provided by Ka |
Similar concerns are being felt by Ka Nguyen, 35, a voice talent based in Ho Chi Minh City. He recalls an “unprecedented” moment when a client generated the entire voiceover for a 30-45 second TV commercial using AI at a cost of a mere VND10,000. Normally he would have earned VND3-4 million for the same job. “They said there was no reason to keep hiring me,” he recounts.
The last six months have been the most challenging period of his 10-year career as a voice actor. In March he stumbled upon a podcast that featured his voice, but he had no recollection of recording it. After going through his contracts, he discovered that one of his clients had used his voice to train an AI model, which was then used to generate the podcast. In essence, the client had only needed to hire him once to create the AI model and never again.
In early April the company he had worked for for over five years told him it “could no longer afford to hire voice talent,” effectively ending his contract. Later he found out it too had replaced him with AI. A voice actor has to be paid around VND100,000 for a short clip, but AI could process hundreds of pages of scripts for under VND20,000.
“Human voices have a natural cadences and inflections, but when the choice is between high quality and something that is ‘good enough’ at a fraction of the cost, they will choose AI,” he explains. His income has dropped by more than 60%. “I am shocked, frustrated and deeply disappointed,” he says.
The challenges faced by Quan and Ka were predicted in a report by the McKinsey Global Institute, which said that at least 14% of the global workforce would need to switch careers due to advancements in AI, robotics and technology.
A recent survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) found that 26% of CEOs in the Asia-Pacific region plan to reduce their workforce as AI takes over more jobs. The International Monetary Fund forecast at this year’s World Economic Forum that by 2030 more than 40% of the global workforce would be affected by AI.
Dang Hai Loc, founder of the virtual assistant platform Mindmaid, says demand for AI in businesses has surged by 300% in the past year. He says AI is advancing rapidly in three areas: intelligence, the range of fields it can be applied to and costs.
AI is directly affecting Vietnamese workers in jobs that are easily replaced, such as customer service, graphic design, product modeling, and content marketing. That people will struggle to retain employment as AI encroaches on various sectors is inevitable.
For Bao Vy, 38, a freelance illustrator living in Binh Thuan Province in the southeast, this race is already proving exhausting. She used to earn over VND10 million a month, but her income has plummeted since the start of 2024. In recent months she has only received sporadic orders, and in October she did not get a single one.
To cope, she has drastically cut her living expenses and focused her energy on managing her small coffee shop in Ham Thuan Bac District. Her former clients admit that while AI-generated artwork “lacks emotion, feels stiff and is prone to errors,” the speed and low costs ultimately won them over.
According to Bui Doan Chung, founder of the Vietnam HR Community, the widespread adoption of AI is inevitable as the underlying technological infrastructure — both hardware and software, including advancements in semiconductors, Internet bandwidth and processors — has matured to support its growth.
The 2024 LinkedIn Learning Workplace Learning Report further highlighted how AI is transforming the way people work and plan their careers. Chung emphasizes that organizations must take immediate action to retrain employees and help them acquire new skills. “Organizations that can learn faster and more effectively will have a strong competitive edge.”
Conversely, workers at risk of being replaced by AI must constantly upskill to stay relevant. Expertise in AI programming, machine learning, data analysis, and interacting with automation tools will become indispensable. Meanwhile, soft skills such as leadership, emotional intelligence, creativity, and interpersonal communication cannot be replicated by AI yet.
Developing these human-centric abilities will help workers create value at AI-driven workplaces. According to LinkedIn, 90% of learning & development professionals agree that human skills are critical to survival in today’s evolving job market.
Quan considers herself lucky to keep her job at the game design company despite the uncertainties; many of her friends in the same industry have been unemployed for two years. Some have had to abandon their design careers entirely, resorting to hourly cleaning jobs just to make ends meet. “I have started learning about financial investments as a backup plan because I do not know when I might lose my job.”
Comments are closed.