I've been a freelance web dev in a niche (online maps) for about 8 years. I have noticed a large drop in project enquiries over the last 12 months or so, and I'm speculating that one cause is potential clients using AI to implement their own projects.

My typical projects are small, single-person full-stack sites: a bit of data preparation, a bit of specialist GIS knowledge, a Vue front-end, a Node backend, and deployment to a server provided by the client. I haven't tried, but I suspect modern LLMs would do a pretty good job building this kind of thing in the hands of a reasonable programmer.

In other words: core value proposition (web mapping expertise and experience) can be provided by an AI.

I'm curious whether other freelancers are experiencing something similar, or whether people on the other side of that equation (working at companies that might typically hire freelancers) have any insight to offer.