As an artist I am concerned about AI image generation

Digital art is not permanently interesting. My sympathies go out to people who feel like they will lose some of their business. However, a group of developers has shown what was always true about digital art: its computational art even if you draw it because it is encoded digitally. In other words, it was always going to be reproducible and remixable.

The problem with being shocked by Dall-E, in my view, is that it shows an ignorance about the historical development of art and its incredible diversity of practice + the final productions and forms of art. OpenAI have sort of Warholised digital art in a way and that's just very standard in art history. People went crazy when Warhol productised art but in reality this was an overreaction and plenty more stuff came after that which completely different in its orientation towards art (e.g. something like Hans Haacke). Dalle-E is a system for producing digital art in the way that Warhol's practice was a system for producing visual art as a commercial product.

Indeed, I'll get worried when DALL-E gets sick of everything it has seen, and comes up with something that's new, and maybe not even very good at first, but perseveres until it's recognized as important. All, while earning its living in some soul sucking day job.

I'd actually love to see DALL-E take on the greeting card industry. Now that would be fun.