A 15-person team serving one client since 2012 lost 80% of income after AI

A 2026 report in The Daily Star features a woman freelancer who has been freelancing since January 2011. From 2012 her team served a foreign company; at one point up to 15 people worked on that company's work. The company also provided office space and laptops for the team, and during Covid, as the company's business grew, the team grew too. The team's work was graphic design, image editing and project management. After AI arrived, that work began to be done by AI. In her words, 'After AI came, our whole business was sold off.' Since losing this large business, her income has fallen by more than 80 percent. In the same report, another Dhaka freelancer with 14 years' experience says the work of their five-member team has fallen by about 25 percent; long-standing direct clients have softened the blow somewhat, and the team is now concentrating more on finding direct clients rather than relying entirely on Upwork and Fiverr. According to the report, simple work such as data entry, image editing and basic content writing is under the most pressure, whereas on Upwork hourly rates for AI-related work are more than 40 percent higher on average.