There are other serious concerns I do have about AI, but on this topic I think it's a reasonable argument.
What you have to remember is that the average person sits in front of a TV for 3-4 hours a day, watching characters who aren't real act out stories that never happened. Some people enjoy the shows where real people stand in front of a camera, while others (guilty!) prefer the ones where cartoonists draw fake people. In both genres, we've long since reached the saturation point where you could watch every second of your free time, but most people don't do that because they don't want to. The same dynamics generalize to Instagram, especially with filters allowing "real people" to look perfect in a way no actual person can - I don't know of reliable statistics on exactly how much people use Instagram, but I'm pretty confident it's not bounded by the number of pictures they could find if they wanted.
Does adding in an intermediate category of "cartoon but looks like a real person" fundamentally change these dynamics? I'm not 100% sure, but I lean towards no.
What you have to remember is that the average person sits in front of a TV for 3-4 hours a day, watching characters who aren't real act out stories that never happened. Some people enjoy the shows where real people stand in front of a camera, while others (guilty!) prefer the ones where cartoonists draw fake people. In both genres, we've long since reached the saturation point where you could watch every second of your free time, but most people don't do that because they don't want to. The same dynamics generalize to Instagram, especially with filters allowing "real people" to look perfect in a way no actual person can - I don't know of reliable statistics on exactly how much people use Instagram, but I'm pretty confident it's not bounded by the number of pictures they could find if they wanted.
Does adding in an intermediate category of "cartoon but looks like a real person" fundamentally change these dynamics? I'm not 100% sure, but I lean towards no.