Walk me through this, because I just don't understand even a little bit.

Who will pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for an artist's or writer's work when they can get something "almost as good" for a couple of dollars from an AI?

Don't forget that the trillions being spent on AI in this decade will need to be recouped as well, so most of those few dollars will go to the large AI companies, not the generic prompt wranglers.

If it takes only 5% as much human work to create an image or text, this will mean that 95% of writers and artists will simply be out of a job. The market for commercial art or writing will not become 20 times larger.

And more, most people who become artists do so because they like to draw or paint or sculpt with their own hands. What possible satisfaction would typing and refining prompts to a computer program give to such people?

I have already seen this happen to instrumentalists, arrangers, copyists, session musicians and recording studios - 90% gone in just a couple of decades.

Question for you: how often do you yourself play a musical instrument, write a short story or poem, paint or draw a picture, or compose a piece of music? Do you have friends who do these things, and have you asked their opinion?

The whole picture seems like a horrible dystopia to me, and I'm a computer programmer.