Will AI Replace Writers? What Students in Media Need to Know in 2026

TL;DR

• Will AI replace writers? Not wholesale, but entry-level word work is shrinking: BLS projects 0% growth for writers and a 6% drop for reporters from 2025 to 2035, while film and video editors grow 4%.

• AI already drafts copy, edits text, assembles rough cuts and makes stock-style images, which are the tasks beginners used to learn on.

• Video editing, animation, event and portrait photography, and PR relationship work are changing more than disappearing.

• Hollywood writers keep a contract rule that studios can't make them use AI. Animators don't have the same rule.

• Your move now: build proof a tool can't fake (original reporting, before-and-after edits, a reel) and get real project experience.

Externships are short, remote professional experience programs where you work on real projects for real companies, with guidance from people in the field. If you want media work on your resume this semester, the Social Media Coordinator Externship with Breaking Games and the Pinterest Gen Z Consumer Behavior Externship give you a company project to point to. Explore all Externships.

Will AI Replace Writers and Other Media Jobs?

AI won't erase writing, video or PR careers, but it's already shrinking the entry-level layer of word-based media work. The BLS rates writers, editors, reporters and PR specialists as "Very high" AI exposure and projects flat or falling employment for most of them through 2035. Visual production roles are changing instead of shrinking.

Having sat down with thousands of students one-on-one, we hear this question most from English, journalism and communications majors. They aren't asking whether good writing still matters. They're asking whether anyone will pay a 22-year-old to do it. Fair question.

So here's the short version. Writing as a skill is fine. Writing as a first job, where someone pays you to turn a brief into 800 clean words, is the part under pressure. If you want the cross-field view, our guides to the best-paying AI-proof majors and jobs AI won't replace cover it. This article stays inside media: writing, editing, video, animation, photography, social and content, and PR.

The AI Exposure Scorecard for Media Jobs

We score every field in this series on the same five rows. The exposure row uses the BLS AI exposure categories released in August 2026, which blend five research measures (BLS is clear that exposure isn't a job-loss forecast). The outlook row uses BLS 2025-35 projections.

That split verdict is the main idea of this whole guide. If the thing you deliver is text, you're the most exposed person in the building, while people who deliver footage, motion or a relationship are less so (at least for now).

What Parts of Media Work Is AI Already Doing?

AI now handles much of the first-draft layer of media work: drafting and editing text, logging and searching footage, assembling rough cuts, filling gaps in clips and producing stock-style images. People still own the reporting, the story, the taste and the final call. That split matters more than any headline about robots.

The Task-by-Task Breakdown

Here's what the tools actually do in 2026, based on vendor announcements and industry surveys rather than predictions.

Notice which rows sit at the top? Drafting, proofreading and logging footage are exactly the tasks juniors were handed in their first year. And PR is already deep in it: in Muck Rack's State of AI in PR 2026 (564 PR pros, surveyed December 2025), 76% said they use generative AI.

What Media Employers Have Said Publicly

But the employer side is messier than the tool list suggests. Three public examples show why.

Business Insider. In May 2025 the company cut about 21% of its staff, and CEO Barbara Peng said it was "fully embracing AI," with about 70% of staff already on ChatGPT Enterprise, according to Fox Business. The same memo blamed falling traffic, so it wasn't AI alone.

The Washington Post. On February 4, 2026 the Post laid off roughly a third of its employees, including more than 300 people in an 800-person newsroom, Poynter reported. The stated reasons were sustained losses and organic search traffic falling by nearly half in three years, which the executive editor partly blamed on AI. Nobody showed that AI tools replaced those reporters. AI-driven search changes hit the business model instead.

The New York Times. In May 2025 the Times signed its first generative AI licensing deal, letting Amazon use its news, NYT Cooking and The Athletic content, per TechCrunch. It's still suing OpenAI and Microsoft. Writing is now something publishers license to AI companies, which is a strange new kind of value.

What Does the Job Data Actually Say About Media Careers?

The data says media is splitting, not collapsing. BLS projects word-based roles to stay flat or shrink through 2035 while video editing and PR grow slowly. Newsroom cuts continue for mostly financial reasons. And young workers in AI-exposed jobs are getting hired less, which is different from mass layoffs.

What BLS Projects Through 2035

The Bureau of Labor Statistics updated its projections in August 2026. All occupations together are projected to grow 3.5% from 2025 to 2035, according to the BLS Employment Projections release. Media mostly trails that.

• Writers and authors: 0% change, about 11,900 openings a year, $76,910 median pay (May 2025). The BLS writers page goes further than most and says AI writing tools are projected to dampen demand for writers over the decade.

• Editors: down 1% (BLS), with 7,900 openings a year and a $77,920 median.

• News analysts, reporters and journalists: a 6% decline, about 2,800 fewer jobs, 3,400 openings a year, $62,200 median (BLS).

• Public relations specialists: 2% growth, 23,000 openings a year, $74,750 median (BLS).

• Film and video editors: 4% growth (BLS).

Wait, why do shrinking fields still have thousands of openings? Because people retire, move up or switch careers, and somebody has to replace them. Flat doesn't mean closed, it just means more people chasing each opening that comes up.

What Research on Young Workers Shows

The clearest early signal comes from Stanford. In its August 2026 update, the Digital Economy Lab found employment of 22-to-25-year-olds in the most AI-exposed occupations is about 19% below where it would be if it had kept pace with less exposed jobs. The gap comes from slower hiring, not layoffs. The authors don't claim AI caused it, and they don't break out media.

Yet not everyone sees it. The Yale Budget Lab's tracker (updated October 2026) says the overall job mix isn't yet shifting in ways that clearly line up with AI. Both can be true: no broad wipeout, but a narrower squeeze on beginners.

And newsrooms are their own story. Press Gazette counted at least 3,434 UK and US journalism job losses in 2025 and 3,875 in 2024, as cited by Media Copilot's 2026 tracker, and most 2026 cuts on that list trace to ownership changes or revenue rather than AI.

From Extern's Data

From Extern's data (as of November 2026):

• Our posting tracker logged 590 US internship listings with media, communications or journalism titles from August to November 2026, from 284 different employers.

• The employers posting the most media internships in Extern's posting tracker (Aug to Nov 2026) were Disney (38), Fox (27), Dow Jones (17) and NBCUniversal (12). They aren't Extern partners; they're simply the biggest posters.

• Among the 47 listings that published pay, employer-published hourly pay for internships had a median of $18.40, with the middle half between $14.50 and $23.20.

One honest gap: we don't track a daily count of professional writer or editor postings yet, so we can't show you a trend line for full-time media jobs. We'd rather say that than guess.

Which Media Jobs Are Safest, and Which Are Most at Risk?

The safest media jobs involve things AI can't do from a chat window: being in the room, shooting on location, building trust with sources and clients, and shaping a story across hours of footage. The most exposed are jobs where the main output is text written to a brief.

Media Roles Ranked by AI Risk

The table below sorts ten common roles from most to least exposed. Microsoft's Working with AI study measures how well AI chat tools match each job's activities, so it rates text jobs high and video jobs low. Keep in mind that it measures chat use, which likely understates what video generators can do.

See the pattern? Routine word production shrinks, while judgment, presence and relationships hold up across almost every row. If the visual side is where you're headed, our companion piece on whether AI will replace graphic designers covers design and motion in more depth, and our marketing article covers brand and content marketing roles.

Why Writers Have a Union Shield and Animators Don't

This one surprises students. In Hollywood, writers and animators signed very different AI deals, and it matters if you're torn between screenwriting and animation.

The Writers Guild ratified its 2026 contract on April 24, 2026, with 90.38% voting yes, and it runs to May 1, 2030, according to the WGA. Per the WGA's AI rules page, AI can't write or rewrite literary material, AI output can't undermine a writer's credit, and a company can't require a writer to use AI. The new deal adds written notice when studios license writers' scripts to train commercial AI. It doesn't guarantee a training fee, whatever some blogs claim.

Animators got the opposite rule. Under Article 21.N of the Animation Guild's 2024-27 contract, a studio may require employees to use AI, with advance written notice and a consultation on request, though it can't make them write prompts in a way that displaces covered workers. Members ratified it with 76.1% yes, down from 87% for the 2022 contract, AWN reported.

How Is AI Changing Entry-Level Media Work?

Entry-level media jobs used to be built on grunt work: transcribing interviews, logging footage, writing captions, cleaning up copy. AI now does much of that, so employers expect new hires to start one level up, editing AI drafts, checking facts and bringing material nobody else has.

Then vs. Now for a First-Year Media Hire

Here's how the first year has shifted, task by task.

• Interviews. Then: you transcribed tape by hand. Now: software transcribes it, and you check every quote against the audio.

• Social posts. Then: you wrote 20 captions. Now: a tool drafts 20, and you pick three, fix the voice and explain why.

• Footage. Then: you logged clips for hours. Now: search finds them, and you judge which moment carries the story.

• Rough cuts. Then: an assistant editor spent a day building the first assembly from selects. Now: a tool can do it in minutes, and you rebuild the pacing.

A caveat we should be upfront about. We haven't found hiring data that measures assistant-editor or junior-writer roles directly. This list comes from what the tools now do, not from a headcount study.

What Employers Expect on Day One

So is the industry worried? Yes, and openly. In the same Muck Rack survey, 77% of PR pros said they worry younger PR pros won't learn the fundamentals, and 61% worry clients will think they don't need content creators. Only 43% of organizations offer AI training.

And employers outside media say similar things. In April 2026, NACE reported that more than a third of entry-level jobs now require AI skills, nearly triple the fall 2025 share, and nearly 60% of employers assign interns projects that use AI tools.

From the recruiting side (our author's background includes years in recruitment process outsourcing), here's how a screener reads a junior media resume now. "Wrote blog posts" gets skimmed. "Reported and wrote a 1,200-word feature with four on-record sources, edited from an AI first draft" gets a second look, because it shows judgment, not just output.

What Skills Make a Media Professional Hard to Replace?

The skills that hold up produce something AI can't remix from what's already online: new reporting, sharp editing judgment, story sense in video, a real audience, rights know-how and relationships. Each one needs proof on your resume, not just a line in a skills section.

1. Original reporting and interviewing. Proof: published clips with on-record sources, whether that's the student paper, a local outlet or your own newsletter.

2. Editing and fact-checking AI output. Proof: before-and-after samples showing what you cut, fixed and verified, plus a short corrections log.

3. Story and pacing in video. Proof: a reel with a one-paragraph breakdown of where you used AI features (auto rough cuts, Generative Extend) and what you changed by hand.

4. Audience building. Proof: an account or channel with growth numbers and a screenshot of analytics you can explain. The IAB projected US creator ad spend at $37 billion for 2025, so brands pay for real audiences.

5. Copyright and rights literacy. Proof: a short write-up applying the US Copyright Office's rules to your own AI-assisted work.

6. Relationships and judgment in PR. Proof: a pitch and press plan for a real organization, plus results from your media list.

But that fifth skill deserves a closer look, because almost nobody teaches it. The US Copyright Office's January 2025 report says AI-assisted work can be protected, but purely AI-generated material isn't, and prompts alone don't give enough control. A federal appeals court confirmed in Thaler v. Perlmutter (March 2025) that copyright needs a human author. Clients care about this, because work they can't own is work they can't fully use.

So where does all this go? Our student portfolio examples guide shows how to lay all this out. And if you're still picking a major, see what you can do with a journalism degree and what you can do with a communications degree.

How Can You Get AI-Ready Media Experience as a Student?

Get work into the world that shows you can use AI tools and still add something a tool can't. That means applying to internships this cycle, publishing clips or a reel, and getting real project experience with a company, where someone else's audience and deadline shape the work.

Internship Programs Worth Watching

Our media and entertainment internships guide tracks the big programs. Disney, NBCUniversal and Netflix have historically posted summer internships in the fall, and music labels like Sony Music have set deadlines around the end of January. If you're reading this in November 2026, some studio windows are already open or closing, so check now. Our Dow Jones internship guide and Disney internship guide go program by program.

Real Project Experience With Extern

Honestly, internships are competitive, and plenty of students apply with nothing but class assignments to show. An Externship is one way to close that gap. Externships run 4 to 11 weeks (most commonly 8), remotely, at about 5 to 10 hours a week, with an extern manager guiding you.

Two open November 2026 cohorts fit media students well:

• The Social Media Coordinator Externship with Breaking Games, if you want to plan and create content for a real brand.

• The Pinterest Gen Z Consumer Behavior Externship, if audience research interests you more than posting.

At Extern, we've seen that students who can talk through one real project, including the parts AI helped with and the parts it got wrong, interview better than students with a longer list of class work. Two-thirds of students attend live cohort sessions with industry mentors (Extern post-program survey, n=1,683, June 2026), and those sessions are where a lot of that feedback happens. To be clear, an Externship won't replace a newsroom internship or a demo reel. It adds a company project next to them, which is often the piece a thin resume is missing. When you're ready, browse current Externships.

Extern is not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by any company, firm or organization named here. This article is based on publicly available information as of November 2026. Job data and company plans change, so check the original sources linked above.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will AI replace animators?

Not soon, but the work is changing. BLS projects flat employment for special effects artists and animators from 2025 to 2035, with a $102,030 median wage. AI speeds up some animation tasks, and the Animation Guild contract lets studios require AI use, with notice and consultation. Character performance and design still need people.

Will AI replace video editors?

Probably not. BLS projects 4% growth for film and video editors through 2035, faster than most media roles. AI already builds rough cuts, fills footage gaps and searches clips, so the job is shifting toward story, pacing and client judgment. Learn the AI features in your editing software instead of avoiding them.

Will AI replace photographers?

It's replacing some stock photography, says BLS, which projects a 1% decline for photographers through 2035. Work that needs someone there holds up: events, portraits, journalism and on-location shoots. If you shoot, build a portfolio around real people and places, not generic images a generator can copy.

Will AI replace copywriters?

AI can draft most routine copy, so pure first-draft work is shrinking. BLS projects no growth for writers and authors through 2035 and expects AI writing tools to dampen demand. Copywriters who own brand voice, strategy and testing, and who edit AI output well, are the ones teams keep.

Will AI replace journalists?

AI isn't replacing reporting, but journalism jobs are shrinking anyway. BLS projects a 6% drop for reporters and news analysts through 2035, and most newsroom cuts trace to losses, ownership changes and falling search traffic. Original reporting, interviewing and verification are still human work, and they're your strongest proof.

Is a journalism or communications degree still worth it?

It can be, if you pair it with proof. New York Fed data for 2024 shows 2.3% unemployment for recent journalism grads but 43.3% underemployment, meaning many hold jobs that don't need the degree. Published clips, a reel or real project experience help you land roles that use what you studied.

Can AI-generated writing be copyrighted?

Only the human part. The US Copyright Office said in January 2025 that prompts alone don't give enough control, while human selection, arrangement and edits can be protected. Purely AI-generated text isn't. If you write with AI help, keep drafts that show your changes, and check each publisher's rules on disclosure.