As an artist I am concerned about AI image generation

Mail couriers had to teach themselves to drive after many years of using horses.

Artists will have to learn how to stimulate AI models in effective ways and perform suitable post-processing.

I think a more 1:1 comparison would be self-driving delivery vehicles - which we haven't figured out yet.

and

I imagine a primary motivation for investing in art-generating AI is cost savings.

disclaimer: By default, I tend to be less sympathetic to artists here. It's due to their communities' collective silence about decades of ever-ratcheting (and typically purchased) copyright laws.

The corporate automation of creative work is not comparable to the choice between different modes of transportation for a courier job.

I would gladly trade less efficiency in art generation for more artists being employed. "AI stimulation" is not a 1:1 swap for being an actual artist.

People are still gonna draw with pencils lol. That's not going anywhere. No time like the present to pick one up if you have a reason to need to render images imo.

Artists will have to find people who pay for the genuine thing. We can all buy cheap mass-produced tableware, accessories, and so on, yet many thrived on Etsy.