It very much is soulless. The AI generated art is imitation, it is not even art.
Sorry you don't get to decide what art is. That is a basic premise of the whole idea of art. Here is some art I created using AI and it is art and it is not "souless":
Maybe you don't like it, maybe you don't like it simply because it is AI generated. But that does not make it not art.
They are not going to be hurt, mostly because I wont buy products with AI generated content, but also because the AI generated art is already freely available.
If you don't buy their products specifically because there is AI art in them, then you are hurting those creators.
This is missing any number of factors. The programmers who learned machine languages just moved on to the next language.
No they didn't. I was a pretty good programmer in my day, using primarily Matlab and Simulink. I can't code in Python or Java and I don't use stack overflow at all, so I can't effectively code today. The industry moved on and left me behind.
Most of the people who used to write machine language back in the 80s and 90s did not move on to programming in higher level languages, they ended up going completely into other lines of work like chip design or designing CLPDs.
They still did the work. AI is doing the work in the future. I'm not going to learn "AI" and do the work. Are you kidding?
You do what you want, but your choices should not prevent stop other people from using AI, buying AI or producing AI artwork.
There are more IT jobs now? Well yes, because the IT industry is massive now. That is not what AI is doing. Its not going to promote industry growth, jobs growth, because its going to end up replacing jobs.
It IS promoting IT growth. I have a team of 5 specifically working on developing AI and ML tools. 6 years ago when I got my current position we had zero people working on AI.
It will continue to promote growth, just like happened when machines replaced people on the production lines.
Back in 1975 we heard the same lame arguments about losing jobs because automation was replacing workers. When that happened we had about 900,000 people working in the auto manufacturing in the US. Today we have 1.1 Million in the U.S. and millions more in other countries producing parts for US cars.
We didn't lose jobs!
Absolutely not. It is not a language, it is not a medium, it is not another way of doing work. It is the REPLACEMENT of labour.
It replaces labor with something more efficient which enables those resources to be used more effectively.
I am not saying artist jobs won't be replaced, but many, many more jobs will be created and those will be better, higher paying jobs.
I've been playing with Dalle-3 now for weeks. I have 1000's of images generated to see what it could do. For my dollar (if I was to spend on it) its already better than content which WotC sold at premium prices.
But I thought it was souless?
I now have people telling me that AI art is terrible and I have other people telling it is better than WOTC content sold at premium prices.
Which is it? Is AI art any good or not?
So if some untrained casual (myself) can take a free product, and generate images that to his casual eye is ALREADY better than an artist who has been paid by the largest employer in the space (WotC) how is that spawning more jobs? How is that helping actual artists?
It is enabling you to take that, put it in your own creative works and market them. As you noted you can generate 1000s of images and market them creating jobs for people at whatever publisher you use to publish them, providing roaylties to whatever online distributer you use. Jobs to advertise your images.
If you are doing this to earn a living it is helping you and you are the artist in this example!
It could, if it wasnt going to be under control of the major tech companies who have already demonstrated that they will control the narrative, build the algorithms to benefit themselves, and wield influence that dictators around the world could only dream about 10 years ago.
It is not under their control.
Do you honestly think 'the people' are going to control AI?
Yes, absolutely I do. The people that care to will.
I mean "the people" didn't control the printing presses, "the people" didn't control the broadcasters in the 20th century. It is far, far easier to counter propaganda today and AI tools are available to everyone.