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I would argue that a large part of art is connecting with another human being through a shared experience. I think that's why so many artists are up in arms about making art so "easy," because it drops the human connection in many ways. The only human in the loop is prompting.
My view is that things will adapt. The human connection is still needed and there will always be art done the "old fashioned way." People still drag around large-format cameras to take pictures or simply shoot on film. My friend does painting and is trying to make a business of it.
At the same time, things have gotten easier. You don't have to be a "good" photographer to take a good photo with your phone's camera -- because there's already so much AI in that loop making things better. Same with so much other human-made art (and beyond). It's so much easier to get to the joy of creation. With photography, you can be creative with your phone and don't need the traditional thousands of dollars of gear to start creating.
The removal of those gates, both financial and the gate of years of practice, is what allows for that creation. I think we should celebrate that, not regulate it. Why does not "paying your dues" make your contribution invalid?
If your art, regardless of how it's made, helps you connect to others, I say that's a good thing.
I have a lot of other ideas in my head I'm trying to get out and make into a coherent argument, but I'm having trouble. For instance, we've had computer spell-checkers for decades now and no one blinks at that. We've had simple grammar checkers for a while as well, predating the AI everywhere thing we're seeing now, and no one really cares about that. It's only a matter of time before AI does more and people don't care. The only thing that really frustrates me is when people give up their agency to AI and stop thinking for themselves. AI is an amplifier of a human's ideas and abilities. But humans are still important.
A good way to think about artists, writers and the sort is to recognize they're performers who use their specialized mediums as a basis for their performances. This is to say the performers themselves don't fade into the background. Their work isn't judged alone and by itself as technically evolved curiousities. The works are frozen in time like amber, yes, but like in any other performance art, their personalities are fully on display everytime those works are perused, every time they make a public appearance or remark to boost their own publicity. It's those parasocial bonds they create which engender a following. AI would need to become not only competent at manufacturing the underlying goods but fulfilling all the other roles these freelancers take on. For freelancers, the whole operation is a one man show where they must become not only technical experts, but also frontmen who can appeal to crowds, manage public images, deal with other professionals. So an AI would need to be able to cover all of those bases in order to directly replace the individual doing them, or at least to turn them into proxies the AIs can micromanage.
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