How to use AI as a 1099

by Dale Davidson March 18, 2026

My wife works for herself in communications and had to interview someone and then transcribe the conversation.

This project was structured as a fixed price contract where the amount of time she spends on it doesn't matter.

She wouldn't make any extra money if she spent longer on the task.

So instead of tediously spending hours transcribing the conversation, she googled an an AI transcription service, uploaded the audio file, and a few minutes later it spit back a neatly formatted transcript.

The cost? $10.

As a 1099 I can think of a bunch of tasks that AI could probably do that will make your life easier and make your 1099 life more successful.

Can you get AI to generate a neatly formatted invoice with the relevant contract details so you can avoid fussing with formatting?
Can you get AI to research and summarize a topic your client is interested in for an impromptu report? Maybe even put it in a slick PowerPoint?
Can you get AI to clean some data or write some code for you that would take you a while to learn how to do?

If you can get AI to help you deliver results faster or more efficiently than you could on your own, you can get some of your time back or get better clients or even take on new and different types of projects that you wouldn't have been able to do without AI.

If you have used AI in your job or 1099 gig, let me know what you used it for and I'll share it in this newsletter.

Want the full playbook? Check out Going 1099.