"Creative workers aren’t typically worried that AI systems are so good they’ll be rendered obsolete as artists, or that AI-generated work will be better than theirs, but that clients, managers, and even consumers will deem AI art “good enough” as the companies that produce it push down their wages and corrode their ability to earn a living.
(...)
Sadly, this seems to be exactly what’s been happening, at least according to the available anecdata. I’ve received so many stories from artists about declining work offers, disappearing clients, and gigs drying up altogether, that it’s clear a change is afoot—and that many artists, illustrators, and graphic designers have seen their livelihoods impacted for the worse. And it’s not just wages. Corporate AI products are inflicting an assault on visual arts workers’ sense of identity and self-worth, as well as their material stability.
Not just that, but as with translators, the subject of the last installment of AI Killed My Job, there’s a widespread sense that AI companies are undermining a crucial pillar of what makes us human; our capacity to create and share art. Some of these stories, I will warn you, are very hard to read—to the extent that this is a content warning for descriptions of suicidal ideation—while others are absurd and darkly funny. All, I think, help us better understand how AI is impacting the arts and the visual arts industry. A sincere thanks to everyone who wrote in and shared their stories.
“I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing,” as the from SF author Joanna Maciejewska memorably put it, “not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.” These stories show what happens when it’s the other way around."
https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/artists-are-losing-work-wages-and
