Snap Inc.’s Evan Spiegel and industry leaders are calling for education reform and the introduction of AI, and new data shows jobs are being lost but wages are rising.
Yesterday at Snap Inc.’s headquarters, the Otis College of Art and Design released its latest Creative Economy Report, providing a timely snapshot of a sector at an inflection point.
California’s creative economy has long been a global powerhouse of culture and innovation, and today employs approximately 740,000 workers, accounting for approximately 5 percent of all employment in the state. It also remains dominant nationally, accounting for nearly one-fifth of U.S. creative jobs and nearly one-third of the wages paid to creative workers nationwide.
The latest data reflects the changing situation. Employment in the creative economy has fallen by about 2.9% over the past year, causing widespread losses of about 114,000 jobs from late 2022 onwards. At the same time, average wages have increased and are now more than 2.5 times the statewide average, due in part to growth in high-wage sectors such as new media, film, television, and audio.
“California’s creative economy is not dying; it is evolving,” speakers emphasized throughout the program. Artificial intelligence is not the main cause of unemployment, according to Tanner Osmond and Patrick Adler of Westwood Economics. Rather, this contraction is tied to widespread industry-wide restructuring, high operating costs, and post-peak corrections in sectors such as film, advertising, and fashion.
The impact of AI is structural rather than substitutive. Rather than replacing workers, AI is changing the dynamics of tasks, automating routine tasks while elevating creators into roles that require oversight, judgment, and direction. As a result, a workforce transformation is already underway.
This transformation formed a headline conversation with Evan Spiegel, co-founder and CEO of Snap Inc., who positioned AI as a leadership imperative. “In the early days of tools like ChatGPT, the most important thing was to role model how to use it for leaders. When leaders adopt these tools, it accelerates adoption across the organization and opens up entirely new ways to build and create.”
Spiegel pointed to AI as a force that will make work more dynamic and creative while providing solutions to some of California’s most pressing structural challenges. From the healthcare sector, where administrative costs account for 15-20% of spending, to the residential sector, where development is slowed by allowing delays, AI has the potential to streamline systems and reduce costs if deployed effectively. “If we can demonstrate how AI solves real-world problems for society as a whole, we can reduce fear of AI,” he said.
The conversation went beyond technology to include culture and education. Spiegel identified education as one of the biggest risks facing California, noting that traditional models focused on memorization and individual performance are out of step with a future that requires collaboration, adaptability, and fluency with AI tools. “You need to evaluate people based on how they work in teams and solve real problems,” he says.
Reinforcing the idea of AI as a creative partner, artist Refik Anadol, co-founder of Dataland, described it as a medium and a mirror, a tool that allows artists to build entirely new worlds, often using their own datasets and archives. The discussion also brought to the fore ongoing tensions around intellectual property, attribution, and compensation, as well as the need for transparency and trust in how AI systems are built and deployed, and provided a framework for how to build AI with both creativity and responsibility at its core.
For Anadolu, the artwork is more than just the final visual output. It’s the system itself. “Our system is an artwork, a living painting,” he said.
He explained how the studio has prioritized transparency when building large-scale AI works, including projects that reached millions of viewers in museum settings. The more detailed the process is, from where the data comes to how it is used, the more the audience will engage. “The more you unravel the system, the more connections you make. Honesty, openness, clarity. That’s what makes people dream,” he added.
That philosophy is shaping his upcoming museum, Dataland, in downtown Los Angeles. Dataland is scheduled to open in June this year, not only for exhibitions but also as a space for education and public understanding of AI-driven art. This work also extends to a broader base focused on expanding access to AI literacy and creative tools.
At the same time, Anadolu acknowledged the real tensions faced by creators at the moment, especially regarding authorship, attribution and ownership. “These are real questions,” he said, noting the ongoing debate over intellectual property and the use of training data.
Spiegel echoed that concern from a platform perspective, stressing the importance of protecting original works as AI tools evolve. “Ownership is very important,” Spiegel said. “We take great care to ensure that these systems do not reproduce copyrighted works.”
For Anadolu, the response is not to retreat from AI, but to redefine how it is built. Rather than relying on open-ended or scraped datasets, he advocates for creators to develop their own archives, collaborate with institutions, and base their work on intentional and ethical sourcing. In doing so, it becomes important that the AI is an author, not a copy. Tools to build a whole new creative world.
For the City of Los Angeles, the impact extends far beyond the creative sector. “The Department of Culture is very proud to support Otis College’s report on the creative economy,” said Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs Director Daniel Tarica. “This information helps inform and structure the arts and cultural economy here in Los Angeles, and is critical to demonstrating how integral arts and culture are to the broader regional economy.”
Looking to the future, Tarika noted that the city is at a pivotal moment. “With the World Cup just 60 days away, Los Angeles is preparing to host a major global event and we are working to ensure meaningful arts and cultural programming at community activation sites across the city,” he said. “It’s about telling authentic stories from within our community.”
Otis’ report emphasizes that the future of California’s creative economy depends not only on technology adoption, but also on systems that support the next generation of creators.
“Today’s events confirmed that creativity remains one of California’s greatest economic strengths, and Santa Monica continues to play a critical role in that ecosystem. While the report highlights real challenges facing the sector, including cost of living and changes in key industries, it was encouraging that core creative jobs are still growing.” The conversation around I is especially timely because these tools are not replacing creativity, but re-engineering workflows, and how communities like Santa Monica enable ethical innovation, workforce training, and long-term sustainability for artists and creative businesses,” said Sophia Kratzker, City of Santa Monica Cultural Affairs Manager.
The question is no longer whether AI will shape the creative economy, but how leaders, educators, and organizations will respond. In Los Angeles, where creativity has long defined both its identity and economy, its response could determine whether the city can maintain its status as a global capital of creative innovation, and that change has already begun.
