Smaller teams, bigger impact: How small teams, individuals, and freelancers can benefit the most from AI

There’s a lot of noise right now about AI taking jobs.

But the more I watch this unfold — especially in the creative sector — the more convinced I am that freelancers and smaller studios actually stand to gain the most from AI. Not lose.

Because for the first time in a long time, the playing field between big agencies and small independents is shifting. Not through cost-cutting or hustle culture, but through capability. The amount of quality output one person can now produce — with the right tools — has quietly exploded.

Humans + AI = Better Work (and Proof to Back It Up)

At WP Engine’s Decode event earlier this year, Dr. Rumman Chowdhury — former Twitter AI lead and now Harvard fellow — shared one of the most refreshing takes I’ve heard on AI and the future of work.

She highlighted a Harvard Business School study called The Cybernetic Teammate, where researchers tested 900 people across four groups:

• Individuals working alone
• Teams working together
• Individuals using AI
• Teams using AI

The results? One skilled individual using AI outperformed entire teams who didn’t use it.
And even when teams did use AI, the difference was basically negligible — statistically speaking, a tie.

That’s wild. It means an independent designer, developer, strategist, or writer using AI tools effectively can now match the collective output of a small team.

And here’s the part I really love: the study found that AI amplified experts the most. People who already knew their craft saw the biggest jumps in quality and efficiency. Those with less experience still improved, but they couldn’t match the results of someone who already had deep subject knowledge.

The Freelance Advantage

In the creative industry, that dynamic is powerful.

Because smaller teams have always had the skill — what we’ve lacked is bandwidth. You can’t out-resource a 50-person agency, but you can out-think them.

And now, AI lets that creativity scale. You can brainstorm, design, write, and prototype faster. You can test more variations, polish more thoroughly, and deliver broader scopes of work without having to hire or subcontract everything out.

Clients are starting to notice this too. When one freelancer using AI can generate strategy decks, moodboards, landing pages and SEO plans in a single week, it changes what clients think is possible from a one-person setup.

That trust — that belief that small can still mean powerful — is a big cultural shift for the creative sector.
And it’s happening right now.

The Freelance Future Looks Bright

I think we’ll look back on this moment and realise AI didn’t flatten the creative industry — it redistributed its power.

Instead of needing a whole team to pitch, research, write, design, and build, you’ll see more small independents handling end-to-end projects with confidence.

Instead of “hiring more people,” the question becomes “how can we do more with what we’ve got?” And that’s where freelancers thrive.

AI isn’t stealing your work. It’s giving you superpowers — if you’re curious enough to explore them.

So, learn the tools. Experiment. Don’t outsource your thinking to the machine, but partner with it.

Because the creative future doesn’t belong to the biggest agencies — it belongs to the ones who know how to work smarter.

And for freelancers, that’s very, very good news.