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Artists push the envelope.

With AI tools artists will be able to push further, doing things that AI can't do yet.

Audiences too. People loses interest fast for anything that something faceless can provide, whether the thing is machines or humans, or whether the act is drawing art or assembling iPhone.

Push further can only artists that weren't crippled by AI.

What do you mean? How can AI cripple an artist? Even if the AI can do stuff better than I can in less time, it doesn't affect my art at all. It's the same thing as human artists better than them existing. Then again, I've seen people who get jealous to a raging degree because artist X can do better than them, so...

Every artist worth anything strives to be better at their craft on the daily, if that artist gets discouraged because there's something "better", that means that artist is not good because those negative emotions are coming from a competitive place instead of one of self-improvement and care for their craft or the audience. Art is only a competition with oneself, and artists that don't understand or refuse this fact are doomed from the start.

Nice idealistic view. It doesn't pay the bills. Artists quit doing art when they have to flip burgers instead. And AI is absolutely unconditionally a competitor in that arena.

Then they were never real artists. I spend 14 hours a day at the office in a rather stressful job and still make time to draw, and I'm everything but a superhuman.

The No True Scotsman can always be counted on to rear it's head.

Online artists are more likely to be consultants and marketing experts. They "flip burgers", or rather make PowerPoints and lays out magazine articles, 12 hours a day for 8 days a week anyway. So AI only "financially" hurts them in the sense that it hurts their dopamine income.

This is more like it. Every dedicated artist I know does something else to pay the bills, from actual burger flippers to sysadmins like me. They will make time to draw things because they simply like doing it.

I really think this is why a lot of discussions and projects around generative AI and AI-relevant art don't go well. It's a one-way outside influence that also affect economy as second order effect to cultural impacts. Because economical impacts of these online arts are mere downstream effects, manipulations in that domain just don't work.

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