Voices of change: Generative AI and the transformation of work in Latin America

This report examines the employment impacts of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) in Latin America through qualitative research in Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Argentina, and Costa Rica, focusing on highly exposed sectors including call centres and customer service, graphic design and visual arts, copywriting and journalism, and software development. Drawing on more than 60 interviews with workers, business leaders, unions, and business associations, the study finds that while GAI adoption in the region remains limited, it is already reshaping tasks, productivity expectations, and skill requirements, generating new tensions around work intensity and job quality rather than clear evidence of mass job displacement. Contrary to dominant exposure-based studies that predict widespread replacement, empirical evidence points to a more complex pattern in which complementarity, task redefinition, and organisational change are more common than outright substitution, even in sectors deemed highly vulnerable. Adoption is being led primarily by larger firms and individual workers integrating tools informally, while small and medium-sized enterprises face significant capacity constraints. Training is largely individual and uncoordinated, exacerbating inequalities between workers with differing levels of digital and cultural capital and revealing the limits of reskilling as a standalone solution, particularly for women and other groups facing structural barriers. The findings highlight deep divergences between business narratives focused on efficiency and union concerns about precarisation, underscoring the risk that GAI may reinforce pre-existing labour market vulnerabilities in the absence of coordinated action. The report concludes that GAI offers a potential opportunity for more inclusive and productive labour markets in Latin America, but only if supported by deliberate social, institutional, and public policy choices that combine access to education, infrastructure, and tools with adaptive, ethical regulation that protects workers’ rights while enabling innovation.