AI art is mostly going to devour churn and burn type of work (a lot of which is already being replaced by stock assets), which I'm fine with because I hate doing that stuff anyway, so it's either just going to reduce the amount of that kind of work clients want or it's going to become a tool I can use to eliminate work I don't like doing.

Sort of like I used to spend HOURS and HOURS in photoshop creating realistic print textures in my illustrations and then someone showed me a Ps plugin that did that exact thing. At first I was put off by the idea of just automating that process, like me doing it manually was somehow more "authentic"... and then I gave it a try and realized I can literally eliminate hours of work from my schedule by using the plugin to set some custom texture settings. 

There will ALWAYS be stuff AI can't do, so I'll focus on that as my main work and use AI to my advantage where applicable.

Anyone doing art professionally not scared by it is just fooling themselves. The AI may not completely replace our industry, but it will replace need for 90%. 

I have been working in animation for many many years. When I started back in the day the in a studio with for example with 20 people When the advance of animation programs came, they reduced that need to 10 people. The "C" quality artists were let go...
Than not many years ago, internet gave way to outsourced work. SO many developing countries and freelance people joined with very competitive prices. Now same studio employed 3 people only, mostly Art director and most experienced people for final fixes. "B" quality artists were let go.
The future now will reduce this number to 1. Just one person to supervise the final result.
And it will be best of the best. 

The need for creators will diminish to the point that finding work will be extremely hard. Not to joke that its easy now, but it will be much much harder. And perhaps you ( especially young among us ) think they are the best of the best. But believe me, competition will get fierce. But compensation will not, because you will be even more replaceable. 

.... 

But how about illustrators, artists that are self employed? 

Imagine that average person will now have at his fingers software that can make pictures.
So imagine people that were for example making money by commission painting RPG characters for people on demand? Well now that same person can say "Make me an female elf with my face, fighting dragon in style of old school D&D art" ... maybe the first result will not be perfect. But he can generate thousand. One of them will be good, and free, and no need to wait, hire artists online ... no fuss. 

So even here just best of the best will be able to still get commissions.

....

Not good outlook.

However, art is not the only thing replaced by AI Drivers, accountants, teachers, doctors, programmers, service people, sales ... In following years you will start to realise this crisis as more and more jobs will erode - and not be replaced ( that is a fairy tale proven wrong many times over )

The big crisis is coming and art is just a small part of it.

So this isn't good and at best it might just devalue all the digital art that I do. So I went here to try it out. Input smell. Well it took so long I stopped caring. 

Then I went here. Input "That smell"

Not even sure what to think. Like a desert with a hint of nose and mouth to it. I dunno, does that make sense? I wonder. So will Ai art take over? I'm not sure. Maybe when it's backed by people willing to use it as a financial instrument or some kind of status symbol (when AIs with weapons decide to be kinder to those who have AI art because they are more cultured in their view), then we'll have AI art truly take over. Your thoughts?