How AI is changing creative work in Austria and the EU.

AI is changing creative work much faster than most people expected.

A few years ago, building a website, preparing a campaign, editing a video or producing a set of marketing images usually meant involving several people with different skills. Today, one person with the right tools can do a surprising amount of that work alone.

That is good news for small businesses and independent creatives, but it also creates pressure on traditional agencies, photographers, designers and developers.

The question is no longer whether AI will become part of creative work. It already has.

The more interesting question is what clients will still be willing to pay for when many production tasks become faster and easier.

AI Is Becoming a Normal Business Tool

AI is already being used by a growing number of Austrian businesses.

It is not limited to technology companies. Businesses are using it for marketing, administration, customer communication, research and everyday tasks that previously required more manual work.

For a small company, that can make a real difference.

If something that normally takes a day can be completed in two hours, the business can either save money or do more with the same resources.

Creative work is particularly exposed to this change because so much of it is digital.

Writing, design, image editing, coding and video editing can all be assisted by AI.

That does not mean that the person doing the work is no longer needed. It means that the amount one person can produce is changing.

Some Creative Services Will Become Cheaper

I think one of the biggest changes will be pricing.

If a business needs a simple landing page today, it is becoming harder to justify a large development budget simply because building that page used to require many hours of work.

The same applies to basic social media graphics, simple advertising copy, routine photo editing and straightforward video editing.

AI has made these tasks faster.

That will probably put pressure on the lower and middle parts of the creative market.

Generic work will be affected the most.

If the client can describe exactly what they need in a few sentences and an AI tool can produce something acceptable, it becomes difficult to charge a premium just for producing it.

This is one reason I think creative businesses will have to offer more than production.

Understanding what a client actually needs is becoming more important than simply knowing how to operate the tools.

Small Creative Businesses Have a New Advantage

There is also a very positive side to this.

A small creative business can now offer services that would previously have required a much larger team.

Someone working independently might be able to build a website, create a small application, prepare the content, edit photographs and produce video without passing every part of the project to another specialist.

AI does not automatically make that work good.

You still need to know what you are doing.

But it removes some of the technical barriers between different types of creative work.

This is particularly interesting for people who already work across several areas.

Photography can connect with video.

Photography and video can connect with websites.

Websites can connect with custom applications and automation.

Instead of selling these things as completely separate services, they can become parts of the same project.

A restaurant, for example, may not really want "a photographer" or "a web designer".

The owner might simply want the business to look professional online and attract more customers.

That could involve photographing the real restaurant, filming short videos, improving the website and creating a simple booking experience.

The tools used to get there are secondary.

What Does This Mean for Creative Agencies?

I do not think creative agencies are going to disappear.

I do think their role will change.

In the past, access to a team of specialists was itself valuable. A client needed an agency because the agency had designers, developers, copywriters, photographers and people who knew how to put everything together.

AI reduces some of that advantage.

A smaller team can now produce much more.

That means the value of an agency will increasingly come from the decisions it makes rather than simply the amount of production it can deliver.

Does the idea make sense?

Does it fit the business?

Does the website actually help customers?

Does the photography feel genuine?

Should something be photographed or generated?

Does the final result look like the company it is supposed to represent?

Those are still human decisions.

Photography Has One Important Advantage

Photography is affected by AI, but not in exactly the same way as purely digital work.

A lot of post-production can already be accelerated.

AI can help remove distractions, improve selections, reduce noise, change backgrounds, adjust parts of an image and speed up repetitive editing.

But there is a limit.

If a company in Vienna wants photographs of its actual employees, someone still needs to photograph those employees.

If a restaurant wants customers to see its real interior and real food, those things need to be captured.

The same is true for events, hotels, properties, products and people.

AI can create an imaginary version of almost anything.

It cannot replace the fact that something really happened in front of a camera.

I think that difference will become more important as generated images become more common.

Real Images Could Become More Valuable

There was a time when simply having professional photographs made a business stand out.

In the future, there may be another reason to use real photography.

Trust.

Imagine visiting the website of a restaurant and discovering that the beautiful dining room, food and staff shown in the photographs were all generated.

Technically, the images might look perfect.

But they tell you very little about the actual restaurant.

Now compare that with photographs of the real place, the real chef and the food that is actually served there.

Those images may not be perfectly artificial, but they are evidence of something real.

For many businesses, that matters.

Corporate portraits are another example.

A company can generate a polished image of almost any imaginary executive.

That does not have the same value as a good photograph of the person customers and employees will actually meet.

Video Is Changing in a Similar Way

Video production is also being transformed.

AI can help with editing, subtitles, translations, audio, effects, storyboards and short content variations.

Generated video is also improving quickly.

That will probably reduce demand for some generic commercial footage.

But if the job is to show a real company, a real event or a real location, somebody still needs to capture it.

The practical workflow will probably become a mixture of both.

Film what needs to be real, then use modern tools to make the production process faster.

Websites and Apps May Change Even Faster

Web development is probably one of the areas where AI is having the biggest immediate effect.

It is becoming possible to describe what an application should do and produce a working version surprisingly quickly.

That changes what a small business can afford to build.

A custom calculator, booking tool, customer portal or internal application might once have been too expensive to consider.

Now some of these projects can be built much faster.

This also means that simply offering "website development" may become less valuable on its own.

The more important part is understanding what the website should do.

A beautiful website that does nothing for the business is still a bad website.

What Is the EU Doing About It?

The European Union is not trying to stop companies from using AI.

Quite the opposite.

The EU wants European businesses to become more competitive in AI and is investing in infrastructure, skills and adoption.

At the same time, it is introducing rules for situations where AI can affect transparency, trust and people's rights.

The EU AI Act is part of that.

Some of its transparency requirements became applicable in August 2026.

For creative businesses, this is particularly relevant when AI is used to create or manipulate content that people could reasonably believe is real.

Deepfakes are an obvious example.

A realistically generated person presented as if that person actually existed can also create transparency issues.

Normal photo editing is different.

Using an AI tool somewhere in the editing process does not automatically turn every photograph into an "AI generated image".

The context and the type of manipulation matter.

That distinction is important for photographers and video creators because AI features are increasingly built directly into ordinary editing software.

Austria Is Moving in the Same Direction

Austria is also encouraging businesses to become more digital and to use AI.

For Austrian creative businesses, this means AI will increasingly become part of normal competition.

A photographer who uses AI intelligently may be able to deliver work faster.

A developer may be able to build things that previously required a team.

A small creative business may be able to compete for projects that would once have gone automatically to a larger agency.

At the same time, businesses still need to pay attention to Austrian and EU rules relating to copyright, privacy, personal data and AI transparency.

Using AI does not remove those responsibilities.

Should Creative Businesses Advertise That They Use AI?

Probably not as their main selling point.

Today AI feels new, so many businesses put the word everywhere.

"AI powered."

"AI agency."

"AI photography."

"AI websites."

I am not convinced that this will age well.

Clients usually care about the result.

If a photographer uses Lightroom, the client does not hire them because they use Lightroom.

If a developer uses a particular coding tool, most clients do not care.

AI may eventually become the same.

It will simply be part of how the work gets done.

The useful question is not whether AI was involved.

The useful question is whether the result is good.

Where Human Creative Work Still Matters

AI is extremely good at producing options.

That is not the same thing as knowing which option is right.

A business can generate hundreds of possible images, layouts, headlines and ideas.

Someone still needs to decide what fits.

That requires understanding the company, the customer and the context.

It also requires taste.

This may be where creative work is heading.

Less time spent doing repetitive production and more time spent deciding what should be created in the first place.

For photographers, there is another human element that is difficult to automate.

People behave differently in front of a camera.

Getting someone comfortable, noticing small details, choosing the right location and knowing when to take the photograph are part of the job.

The camera is only one part of photography.

Creative Roles Are Starting to Overlap

I also think the boundaries between creative professions will become less strict.

A photographer may also shoot video.

A web designer may build small applications.

A developer may become much more involved in design.

A filmmaker may create complete digital campaigns.

AI makes it easier to move between these areas because it reduces some of the technical work required to learn a second or third discipline.

That could be especially useful for independent creatives.

Instead of competing only as a photographer, designer or developer, one person can solve a larger part of the client's problem.

How We Look at AI at Create23

At Create23, I see AI as a tool rather than a replacement for real creative work.

If it helps improve an image or makes part of the workflow faster, there is no reason to avoid it simply because it is AI.

At the same time, not everything needs to be generated or heavily modified.

For many projects, the most valuable thing I can create is still an honest photograph of the person, place or business that was actually in front of me.

The same applies to video.

Technology will keep changing.

The tools I use five years from now will probably be very different from the tools I use today.

What matters is the final result and whether it genuinely represents the person or business it was created for.

What Comes Next?

Nobody knows exactly what the creative industry will look like in ten years.

What already seems clear is that producing digital content is becoming faster and cheaper.

That will hurt some traditional services.

It will also create new opportunities.

For independent creatives, the biggest opportunity may be the ability to do things that previously required an entire agency.

For clients, the advantage should be better access to professional creative work without paying for unnecessary layers of production.

And for photography and video, there may be an unexpected benefit.

The easier it becomes to generate something fake, the more meaningful it may become to show something real.

About the information on this page

EU and Austrian AI rules are still developing.

This article reflects the situation as of September 2026 and is intended as general information, not legal advice.

Specific projects involving deepfakes, synthetic people, personal data, biometric information or other regulated uses of AI should be assessed individually.