Media company closes due to AI impact as David Johnson, owner of DMJ-Imagery in Chatteris, Fenland, announces his decade-old videographer business closure in April 2025. The veteran Royal Air Force photographer cited a dramatic “plummeted” workload over the past 12 months, marking another casualty in the artificial intelligence impact on creative industry professionals across the United Kingdom.
Videographer Business Closure Highlights Creative Industry Crisis
Johnson, who spent over 20 years in the Royal Air Force including nine years as a photographer, established DMJ-Imagery as a sole proprietorship specializing in advertisements, films, documentaries, audio dramas, and podcasts across Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire. Despite maintaining financial stability throughout the Covid pandemic, his video production business challenges intensified dramatically when businesses began turning to generative AI for film production, video editing, and script writing services he previously provided.
The shift happened rapidly and devastatingly. “Living in the Fens, there’s not a lot of money around,” Johnson explained in his announcement. “That, and the influx of AI, has had quite a significant impact. The work has basically dried up in the last 12 months.” His company, which had survived economic downturns and global pandemic disruptions, could not withstand the technological revolution transforming the creative services sector.
Johnson’s experience represents a growing crisis among independent creative professionals who built their careers on specialized skills now being replicated by algorithms. The Fenland media company owner noted that businesses in his region either lack budgets for professional services or are experimenting with cost-effective AI alternatives to discover their capabilities, leaving little room for traditional videography services.
Association of Photographers AI Warning Reveals Industry-Wide Impact
The Association of Photographers (AOP) describes this trend as a “relentless threat to their livelihoods” for UK video production industry professionals. Chief executive Isabelle Doran stated that AI services “evidently now directly compete with photographers’ and other visual artists’ livelihoods,” while image-makers have received “no acknowledgement, compensation or transparency” regarding their work being “scraped from the internet without permission” to train AI models.
According to AOP polling data, 58% of members reported creative professionals losing jobs to AI through generative technology that produces images, videos, audio, and text with simple prompts requiring minimal human intervention. This statistic underscores the widespread nature of the crisis facing visual artists, photographers, and videographers across the United Kingdom.
The association emphasized that the lack of consent, compensation, or even acknowledgment for creative work used to train AI systems represents an ethical crisis alongside the economic devastation. Photographers and videographers who spent decades honing their craft and building portfolios now find those very portfolios may have been used without permission to create the technology displacing them.
Fenland Media Company Owner Criticizes AI-Generated Content Quality
Johnson strongly criticized AI replacing human creativity, emphasizing that AI-generated art lacks “passion, soul or emotion” he has observed in automated productions. “You still need to have that human intervention,” he asserted, defending the irreplaceable value of human touch in creative work that connects emotionally with audiences.
Despite the technical capabilities of generative AI to produce videos, images, and scripts, Johnson maintains that the output fundamentally differs from human-created content. His critique reflects a broader debate within creative industries about whether efficiency and cost savings justify the loss of human artistry, emotional depth, and creative intuition that characterize professionally produced content.
The DMJ-Imagery shutdown comes amid limited financial resources in the Fenland region, where small businesses and organizations that previously hired professional videographers now turn to free or low-cost AI tools. This economic reality, combined with the novelty factor of experimenting with new technology, has created a perfect storm for independent creative professionals.
Impact on Traditional Creative Services Business Model
The closure highlights how artificial intelligence technology is disrupting traditional service-based business models in creative industries. Unlike previous technological advances that augmented creative professionals’ capabilities, current AI tools directly replace their services, eliminating the middleman entirely in many cases.
Johnson’s decade-long business survived multiple challenges including economic recessions and the Covid-19 pandemic by adapting to changing client needs and market conditions. However, the AI disruption presents a fundamentally different challenge—not reduced demand for creative content, but reduced demand for human creators to produce that content. While some tech companies are implementing AI chatbot restrictions on their platforms, the broader impact of AI on creative industries continues unabated.
Post-Closure Plans: Unfiction Project Launch
Following his company’s dissolution in April 2025, Johnson plans to dedicate time to “The Eberswalde Enigma,” an unfiction project representing a burgeoning storytelling genre. Unfiction presents fictional narratives as reality across multiple platforms including social media, videos, and podcasts, offering Johnson a new creative outlet beyond traditional commercial videography work.
This pivot represents one possible adaptation strategy for creative professionals displaced by AI—moving into experimental, avant-garde creative spaces where human imagination and storytelling prowess remain irreplaceable. The unfiction genre, which blends reality and fiction across multimedia platforms, requires the kind of nuanced human creativity and emotional intelligence that current AI systems cannot replicate.
Broader Implications for Creative Economy
The UK government acknowledges AI’s “vast potential” to boost economic growth, yet individual stories like Johnson’s reveal the technology’s devastating immediate consequences for small business owners in specialized creative sectors facing unprecedented digital disruption. The media company closes due to AI story serves as a cautionary tale about technological progress outpacing workforce adaptation and economic safety nets.
As more creative professionals face similar circumstances, questions arise about industry sustainability, workforce retraining, and whether regulatory frameworks should address AI’s impact on livelihoods. Johnson’s announcement that his videographer business will close permanently in April 2025 adds another data point to the growing evidence of AI’s disruptive force in traditionally human-dominated creative industries.