Every time I've heard "[X] should embrace AI or get left behind" it's being said by someone making or selling AI (or a product they shoehorned AI into).
That's not how we should see it. Digital artists spend a lot of time creating and trying different things. On the other hand we have people with different conditions who have ideas without the skills yo execute anything.
This allows everyone to do more and quicker, increasing the earning potential. AI is useful as long as it levels out the playing field. It's the malicious use we need to moderate and like drugs, thats a slippery slope.
When I am amazed by a piece of art, it's because a person was able to conceive of a scene and then use techniques they've learned to bring that scene from their mind into reality. I think, "Wow, how did they decide to blend those colors together in such a way, and why? I wonder how hard it is to get that right? How long might it take me to learn the same technique?"
But when I look at a piece of art made by AI, I think, disappointedly, "Oh, they didn't. Nobody leaned the technique to paint this, there may not be any feeling behind it, or any point at all, other than 'it looks good.'" It's just not impressive.
And I'm pretty sure that most people could learn how to prompt successfully in a matter of days or weeks. Real artists practice their craft for years, learning and perfecting techniques and often developing their own unique style.
How does it increase earning potential? Best case it would flood the market with shit and result in less income due to either dilution of spending amongst thousands of idiots using “ai” or destroy the need for a market in the first place. If everything is ai why would I pay the “artist” instead of just going to stablediffusion or something similar?
One can look at art as either being about "the end result" or about the process of human expression. AI can produce the former (of varying quality), but not the latter.
Hot take here: they're not wrong. AI speeds up tons of processes that many traditional artists won't be able to keep up, just like digital painting sped up tons of processes that traditional painting could not keep up.
This doesn't mean that traditional art will die. Physical art will surely find it's niche and it will be sought after by collectors, for example. But in the commercial environment, faster is better and AI will be a factor.
Forget artists! I'll just get Adobe AI and create the logo I would have paid an artist to make....if I had ever a need for a logo. What else does Adobe do anyways other than logos 😆.
Goodbye artists, is also saying goodbye Adobe. They gotta thread lightly.
Anyone spreading this misinformation and trying gatekeep being an artist after the avant-garde movement doesn't have an ounce of education in art history. Generative art, warts and all, is a vital new form of art that's shaking things up, challenging preconceptions, and getting people angry - just like art should.