Wonder how people felt when cameras were invented, or digital art... do you know how the newspaper industry went when the internet started? Completely fucked, and what happened? People adapted to new technologies and the strongest survived. If an artist is solely out there to make it as a living, that's a pipedream that only some can really fulfill. It is fucked up that ai art takes styles and references into account, but it's also dumb not to use it to evolve your own art or at whatever artform you practice. Obviously people shouldn't say they made that art, but instead that they prompted it... as language is important to define values of other parts of society. I think the biggest issue is that people are so obsessed with the pride of making art to make money, and not to take pride in the idea of making art for expression. For example, I love the bleach series, will I ever actually be able to meet Tite Kubo. I want to have characters designed like his style of art. Will I be able to finish my novel by the time he will still be alive and able to draw, probably not. Since it also means my novel has to sell, due to society's values. However, if we all didn't have to worry about money, then I could imagine a higher chance of being more motivated to finish my works to possibly meet Kubo one day to let him know how much he inspired me to keep going.
Art is everywhere, and makes societies, but end of the day in this modern age... we need to accept that art is evolving just like how artist had to deal with each medium that comes and evolves artforms. Television changed radio, and many other things have become automated. Would you prefer to build a car manually, or have a machine do the rough parts? When it comes to certain youtube artist and others I looked at these past few days, it still makes me restless... here I am enjoying ai art as someone who gave up on art as a child, but refound it during his early 20s and becoming more motivated again to try when I am bipolar, ptsd, insomnia ridden and about to be 31. I cannot drive a car to see the world, I take walks and try to get inspired to live, I look at art on the internet and other things and think to myself this keeps me going. I dream of the day I can make money off of my artform being literary... and I just plan on using my ai art prompt completions as concept art. That alone still sounds horrible to me, but I've got nothing left, and time isn't coming back. I can't time travel to grade school and tell myself "Hey kid, keep those drawings you made safe, don't give up just cause your parent's newspaper business has you guys bankrupt." I'm explaining this in a more personal fashion to try to say... maybe art the way society has set it up is more of a way to gatekeep poor people from being able to produce it. As the thought of art school was impossible, and my mind was more or less always depressed before I found out I was bipolar in my 20s. I have had times were writer's block hits me for a year, and then when I started using ai art, I'm spawning ideas just from glancing at my ideal visual art. I will not ever say I made it on my own, I will always know that I'm just innovating off of others. As I'm a writer, and sadly if visual artist feel this much fear, I'm kind of just wondering what part of your mind ever thought that ai art wasn't going to happen. It's human technology, 90 % of the world can stop ai art, and yet 10 % will find the means to make it happen. Makes people who fear ai art sound more or less close minded and overly prideful. Crying that this is my creation, when we are all just a part of a web of creativity. IF tite kubo never existed, my conscious would just retrack to walt disney classic art as references. If that never existed, the sun and moon would be my references, nature itself. This is a new golden age where the man and machine are able to produce art in a relationship together. And those who wish to remain traditional are fine to, but realize one thing, people will still yearn for art created by humans. Maybe I'm just rambling but this is how I see ai art.