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  1. Home/
  2. Salaries/
  3. AI Hubs/
  4. AI Creative Roles
Salaries

Creative discipline.

AI Creative Roles.

Where AI meets craft.

23
Tracked roles
$133K
Median salary
$50K to $240K
Full range

Source.

By Justin Bartak, Founder & Chief AI Officer·Updated May 2024·Q2 2024 benchmarks

Generative models changed creative work in 18 months more than the previous 18 years combined. Content moderation, AI copywriting, image and video generation, sound design, avatar and digital human design, creative technology. The roles that pay well are the ones held by people with both editorial taste and the technical chops to drive the model. Most creative directors do not have both yet. The ones who do are scarce. Roles below are sorted by base salary.

Roles in ai creative roles.

AI Creative Roles ranked by base median salary, sourced from Orbyt Intelligence Q2 2024.
RoleLowMedianHigh
AI Creative Director$140K$185K$240K
AI Content Moderator Lead$109K$134K$173K
AI Content Moderation Engineer$99K$133K$174K
Video AI Engineer$99K$133K$174K
AI Video Engineer$99K$133K$174K
AI Audio Engineer$99K$133K$174K
AI Music Generation Engineer$99K$133K$174K
AI Content Generation Engineer$99K$133K$174K
AI Video Understanding Engineer$99K$133K$174K
AI Audio Understanding Engineer$99K$133K$174K
AI Image Generation Engineer$99K$133K$174K
Text-to-Video AI Engineer$99K$133K$174K
AI Music Composer Engineer$99K$133K$174K
AI Creative Technologist$95K$128K$165K
AI Video Production Specialist$85K$115K$155K
AI Video Generation Specialist$78K$113K$162K
AI Sound Design Specialist$78K$105K$142K
AI Image / Video Artist$69K$100K$141K
AI Avatar/Digital Human Designer$69K$100K$141K
AI Technical Writer$65K$92K$104K
AI Content Strategist$53K$77K$109K
AI Copywriting Specialist$50K$72K$102K
Generative AI Content Strategist$50K$72K$102K

Top cities.

Median ai creative roles salary across the top U.S. metros for AI compensation. Multiplier reflects local cost of living relative to the national median.

San Francisco, CA

$180K

+35% vs. national

New York, NY

$170K

+28% vs. national

Seattle, WA

$165K

+24% vs. national

Boston, MA

$162K

+22% vs. national

Austin, TX

$137K

+3% vs. national

Denver, CO

$144K

+8% vs. national

Los Angeles, CA

$157K

+18% vs. national

Chicago, IL

$142K

+7% vs. national

Atlanta, GA

$136K

+2% vs. national

Washington DC, DC

$166K

+25% vs. national

Common questions.

Increasingly yes, but for different jobs. Traditional copywriters and designers who learned to drive generative tools are competing for hybrid roles that pay better than either pure-creative or pure-AI roles alone. Pure traditional creative roles are seeing wage pressure.

Not for most. The valuable skill is taste plus prompt-driving plus model fluency. Many of the best-paid AI creative technologists came from engineering backgrounds and learned the editorial side, or vice versa. Pure art degrees without technical skill are at a real disadvantage.

AI Creative Director at a brand-led startup. The role demands both visual judgment and the ability to direct a team of generative tools, and the candidate pool is small. $250K to $400K total comp is common at top consumer companies for senior hires.

Related AI hubs.

AI Healthcare Roles

Where AI meets medicine.

AI Finance Roles

Where AI meets capital.

AI Legal & Policy Roles

Where AI meets law and policy.

AI Security Roles

Where AI meets adversaries.

AI Industrial Roles

Where AI meets the physical world.

AI Consumer & Commerce Roles

Where AI meets the consumer.

AI Executive Roles

Where AI meets the C-suite.

AI Research Roles

Where AI meets the frontier.

AI Product Roles

Where AI meets the roadmap.

AI Design Roles

Where AI meets the interface.

AI Operations Roles

Where AI meets production.

AI Engineering Roles

Where AI meets the codebase.

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