As an artist I am concerned about AI image generation

It's odd as a design manager, I feel like people focus on the wrong things to be alarmed about with DALL-E, and aren't alarmed enough about others.

* feels like there will be a subtle shift from (corporate) designers as creators to designers as technical sheepherders and retouchers. senior designers who have a real nose for art direction and understanding the fundementals will be fine. interns and juniors may get hit with a widening canyon of blindly using these tools without understanding why the "base" styles/logos look good. the act of creation is a learning experience that this removes.

* I feel like phi-y in a different comment has the most accurate read on the situation, given how this will not replace the superstar artists who've already gone through the years of training and sweat-shop work to refine their craft, but the beginner artists who "need" the sweatshop years to get a real-world sense of their craft and the money from the more easily reproducible works.

* there is a difference from using digital art as a tool (say, an apple pencil) to digital art as a resource-crutch (photobashing) when crunched for time or resources. I have mixed feelings about photo bashing as an art but those who rely on the resource-crutch sign may get hit hardest versus the ones that already have the raw illustration skills and can adapt/art-direct on the spot.

* copyright laws are gonna be interesting when people start trying to "base" results on logos like disney and coca-cola and get lawyers sent after them if it's too obvious. My fear is this creates yet another power imbalance between those who have the money to sic lawyers on others versus not.

* I'm mixed on DALL-E because on one hand and to be perfectly blunt, I feel like the most easily reproduced work is ugly/same-y as sin, and lacks all originality compared with the more creative/taboo-art circles who are the first ones to push stylistic and thematic boundaries. I'm not worried about DALL-E replacing styles that are inherently harder to reproduce.

On the other hand ... a sense of grace should be extended to artists who are affected. Being slowly replaced/treated as obsolete is a hard thing to experience, much like how natural age is rough on people's emotional states to the point where it's a type of trauma. It's messy, and it's hard, and I acknowledge there's going to be casualties.

Agree with most of what you're saying, but a bit perplexed by this

>interns and juniors may get hit with a widening canyon of blindly using these tools without understanding why the "base" styles/logos look good. the act of creation is a learning experience that this removes

Surely with digital art more than most professions the understanding of why the end product works is pretty orthogonal to the actual technical implementation details anyway? You don't understand composition or style or taste or brand identity or proportions by creating textures and shapes from scratch or knowing your way around a tool. To that extent, spending their days filtering mediocre compositions not created by them and fixing their flaws might give them a much keener sense of what isn't quite working than trying to judge mediocre compositions they've put a lot of effort into themselves objectively. I can see bigger issues with the thought that might be comparatively dull work for a lot of people.