People who have honed their creative abilities should be able to make a living off of those talents.
Maybe, but it seems that most of the world chose a free market economy, where one's ability to make a living isn't depending on the effort one had put out. If I spend 20 years learning to practice law, I won't be making any money, while someone who has a knack for it and became a lawyer quickly can. In general, unfortunately, how long and how hard it is to do something isn't a factor in one's money-making ability. Actually it's the contrary, being able to learn how to do something easily is often the key to living off better. Coalmakers where replaced with coalminers. Less effort needed once the tools were available to do massive and deep underground mining.
Except, this thread is about genarative-ai taking jobs, not about billions of people using gen-ai for personal uses. We are specifically talking about professional writers & artists that are being replaced by current & future gen-ai tools.
Honestly, in this thread, both paid-for, subscription based art generative AI has been criticized as well free, non profit models. Up to this point, I have seen nobody say "it's awful except for SDXL or SD3, because those aren't commercial". But maybe I missed the subtle difference.
The reality is that this will likely take a decade or more to fully resolve itself, as laws always lag behind the development of new technology.
This is a trope, but is it true? The EU (among other, it's not a singular exception) was able to adapt laws in the short time between 2017 and now, while generative AI is just starting to develop. Lawmaking may take some time, but it's not as irresponsive as is usually thought. I understand you don't like the collective choices made by the EU, but it's not like laws is lagging structurally.
In the meantime, disruption to jobs, especially creative fields are particularly effected by these changes.
Not only. Artists aren't specials. Doctors, lawyers, engineers, elderly care assistants, programmers, supermarket cashiers, taxi drivers, delivery persons, executive secretaries, everyone will be affected. It's just a question of time, and them being in denial for longer. It's not long ago that the main thing you heard about AI was "it sucks, it can't draw hands, it can't do someone eating spaghetti and so on..." I guess some (especially white-collars) jobs will be in the same "no, AI can't do acccounting, it requires someone with my skills" mood for some time.
Artists are being dumped by clients, some openly telling artists that they are not being hired because the client decided that gen-ai was good enough for them (ahem, they really meant free). That artist may not be able to pay rent now, because their commercial work is drying up.
Lots of occupations are concerned. I posted earlier about AI-generated wildlife for Hollywood, it is certainly impact those who live of capturing lions and training them for cinema. It is certainly also disrupting those whose job was to locate illegal homeless encampments and remove them (if the locating part is automated, the number of persons needed for that will drop). I suppose it's more visible with artists because they are more common on this board than lion tamers, and because it's one of the first sizable groups of persons. I'd have bet automated driving would have come first, if you had asked me two years ago, removing all need for truck and taxi drivers overnight.
Nobody cares what you do on your own with gen-ai
Some care enough to libel other with accusations of theft and lie, so I guess they do care a little.
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