Issues with AI Art
There are three issues I see with AI art:
1)We still live in a capitalist economy where higher paying and more comfortable jobs are being increasingly automated. Yes, artists have more tools, but it's also increasingly possible for a shrinking minority of highly skilled and educated artists (the already wealthy) to provide 'more than their share' of art in the market, outcompeting other artists far more than would have been possible without the automation. In a nutshell, it takes away more jobs than it creates, and the jobs that it does create worsen income equality instead of helping to fix it.
2)Even without the economy, part of the artistic drive is to have your own work appreciated. In a world with no automated art your art is more likely to be appreciated and you are more likely to be motivated to create art. This may be a selfish motivation but it's still a very real human motivation, and flooding the market with high quality AI and tons and tons of low quality AI art will not have a positive impact on artists motivations.
3)Being a "prompt artist" is totally different from being a visual artist in the sense of applying the paint to the canvas yourself. They may both be art, and there is definitely an overlap of appeal, but the same people who are interested in making art with more traditional methods will not all be interested in the newer methods. So it is not just a change in the industry, in many ways it is destructive.
