Recording devices destroyed most of the musician's jobs. Vast majority of musicians who were employed before advent of recordings didn't have their own material and were not good enough to make good recordings anyway. Same with artists now: the great ones will be much more productive, but the bottom 80-90% won't have anything to do anymore.
I disagree, with AI the dynamics are very different from recording.
Current AI can greatly elevate what a beginning artist can produce. If you have a decent grasp of proportions, perspective and good ideas, but aren't great at drawing, then using AI can be a huge quality improvement.
On the other hand if you're a top expert that draws quickly and efficiently it's quite possible that AI can't do very much for you in a lot of cases, at least not without a lot of hand tuning like training it on your own work first.
I think it will just emphasise different skills and empower creative fields which use art but are not art per se. If you're a movie director, you can storyboard your ideas easily, and even get some animation clips. If you're an artist with a distinct personal style, you're in a much better position too. And if you're a beginner who is just starting, you can focus on learning these skills instead of technical proficiency.
Indeed. It is definitely going to be a net negative for the very talented drawers and traditional art creators, but it's going to massively open the field and enable and empower people who don't have that luck of the draw with raw talent. People who can appreciate, enjoy, and identify better results will be able to participate in the joy of creation. I do wish there was a way to have the cake and eat it too, but if we're forced to choose between a few Lucky elite being able to participate, and the rest of us relegated to watching, or having the ability to create beauty and express yourself be democratized (by AI) amongst a large group of people, I choose the latter. I fully admit though that I might have a different perspective where I in the smaller, luckier group. I see it as yet another example of the Rawlsian Veil of Ignorance. If I didn't know where I was going to be born, I would be much more inclined on the side of wider access.
Recording devices permitted artists to sell more art.
Many of the uses of AI people get most excited about seem to be cutting the expensive human creators out of the equation.