I never seen this mentioned before, but I often have a situation where someone will ask me to create something, what I’ve noticed is that nowadays people talk to me about the creation like they talk to an AI chatbot, “make this” “make it look more scary” “make it more mysterious” “give it realistic hands” it wastes a lot of time.
That rings true for my experience in corporate/medical media over a decade ago before swearing it off. It was dehumanizing then and I can imagine it’s worse now with consumer expectations poisoned by AI.
Scope of work or bust, never take spec work without upfront pay