> The flip side of this is that if we undermine paid creators until there's no incentive for them to create
The incentive to create is almost never financial. How many artists finance their creative efforts by working day jobs? Making a living as an artist is more about buying yourself the time to focus on making art than it is about making money. People will continue to create art, however they can, because they must.
I agree that people wouldn't stop making art. Sorry to shift the goalposts here: I do think that there are types of art that are not created except for commercial reasons, and that body of work is what I would expect to get displaced by AI. In fact it already is, Advertising creative media is one example, it's an industry I am involved in and we are already seeing Dall-E and ChatGPT getting used for quickly concepting ideations for clients etc. I would expect an AI to get worse at meeting commercial needs over time because of what I said in my original comment. Or at least for commercial creative media to stagnate if it could only use AI (because no one is making commercial media just for fun).
This is all stuff I am actively thinking about since it is impacting me right now, so I appreciate the discussion and would be happy to be wrong.
The incentive to create is almost never financial. How many artists finance their creative efforts by working day jobs? Making a living as an artist is more about buying yourself the time to focus on making art than it is about making money. People will continue to create art, however they can, because they must.