I wholeheartedly believe this too. There's something so amazing about the feeling of creating things with your own hands and seeing what the rest of the world says about it. But the moment you rely on this to literally not starve, any unfairly advantaged competition becomes that much more dangerous.

Yes, indeed. And, in fact, it would probably make them happier if the bullshit commercial art that's bereft of meaning - a subset of commercial art, to be clear - was no longer something they had to concern themselves with in order to pay the bills.

If they - and the rest of us - could be granted the dignity of a good and comfortable life while perusing projects that were personally fulfilling, then there'd be little issue. But instead, their work is being used not only to line the pockets of investors and a handful of tech enthusiasts with the right connections (generative machine learning models aren't that hard for anyone with some programming skills and basic linear algebra to develop, the magic is in the money), but to directly undercut their paid work. And that's just not going to fly.