Comment by wokwokwok

Imagine a world where AI art tools are commonly used.

Ignore the messy legal and moral issues; just imagine, for a moment. What's changed?

These tools effectively enable artists to:

- generate a variety of concepts for some desired output

- render out the detail, lighting and shading that has traditionally been done by hand

- convert existing images and concepts into artistic 'styles'

You want a set of icons? You want a custom font?

The effort is reduced from weeks or work to days, if that.

People will have to learn to use them; just like any other tool.

So really, what actually changes?

Two things, specifically spring to mind:

- The existing skills that people have to do these things become obsolete.

- The number of people needed to do the current job that artists are employed to do is drastically reduced.

That's what's going to happen, and it's happening already. You need people to paint tween frames for your animated video? Well, 2 guys in a basement can do it now instead of a team of 10.

Yeah, you still need the key frames... but the mechanical shading and drawing that employs of lot of people, specifically in the animation industry, is going to be ERADICATED.

In corporate teams, will your 'design team' of 5 people be cut to 1? Probably not.

...but, those industries don't employ the majority of creatives. The majority of artists do not draw concept art. They do mechanical technical processes in VFX and animation.

There will be new companies, and new roles.

...but, a lot of people will find the mechanical work that earns them their daily living wage will replaced by a much more efficient automated process. Those people may, perhaps, be able to re-train and get new creative roles doing other things.

...

What the 'anti-AI' movement has won is a short reprieve until the 'ethical' and 'watermarked' corporate AI art generators roll out, and get accepted as industry standard. Maybe that's a good thing? I dunno.

I think it's fair to sat that the cat is out of the box now.

In the future, there will not be industrial scale human drawn 2d art. That industry will no longer exist. Hopefully the people currently in that industry can find other creative roles (or retire) by the time that happens.

When photography came out, it had a similar impact on hand drawn photo-realistic paintings; and I think you can see thing, historically. It's not that no one does it any more. It's that it has become a niche job, that is technically inferior to just taking a photo.

That's where this is headed for 2D artists.