Ok, so lets split the conversation into fine art versus generic commercial art and design we see everywhere.

Because as I see it, this is how the future is splitting out. This goes back to the blacksmith producing unique items. People still buy things like to this day and pay a healthy sum of money for it. But this is not the economy either, the vast majority of consumption is items that are mass produced with as little human interaction as possible. I don't see it in any way controversial that large chunks of this market will be automated away.

And example of this is in game asset design. There is a still a lot of manual human work here, but the workflows are being highly automated by 'smart' tools. I can promise you that my friend in this industry don't want to color in 50 bajillion pieces in an armor set. The tools for transfering things like style across multiple pieces massively reduce the workload. And as time goes on I expect we'll see these tools affect other areas of art. Another good example is music. A single artist can produce and distribute their own digital music easily. Entire portions of the music can be handed off to tools to put in things like drums and such.

Now when you're playing a game, or in the elevator listening to whatever's being piped out of the speaker, do you think about or care about if it's made by a human or not? It won't stop you from buying a human painted mural for your wall. You'll still listen to your favorite human artist. But expect huge swathes of the ambient art/design/possibly music around you to be automated in one form or another.

This doesn't make sense to me as a response. I think it surely goes without saying the models are good for things like game asset design, or ambient music, I say exactly that in a sibling comment. (although the ambient music one is a little silly to me personally. Brian Eno already invented procedures and ideas for generative ambient works without a single GPU like 50 years ago. Not to mention Terry Riley, John Cage, Steve Reich. Consider also the algorithmic nature of classical Indonesian gamelan music. Would be an accomplishment if anything from a statistical model could match the beautiful, simple, almost dumb elegance of such works. It feels like such overkill. But I digress..).

The article which I'm responding to seems to me to be about not being demoralized as an artist in the face of advances in AI, presumably to artists who aren't just trying to get a commission check for some elevator music, but care about what they are making, hence the possibility of being demoralized. And my point is that they don't need to worry, and that it only seems this way right now because of enthusiasm for the idea of AI art itself, not any one work.

In a way by, intentionally or not, eliding this crucial context, you are helping me prove my point! We cant separate the value/worth/goodness of an AI work without reaching outside it to talk about what it means, its reference to a coming future, its bare ability to be "human like", or even just matching the spec, as it were.

People are just so caught up in justifying this stuff right now, they don't have even the ability to consider it in itself. This is all I'm saying.

I think if you read what I'm saying you could agree with me without giving up any of your commitments here, just dont be quick to jump on something that seems wrong without 1. giving charity in what the other is saying, 2. understanding the context in which it is said, in this case the article I was responding to.