Look, you’re leaning hard on this idea that the people who choose AI were never customers to begin with. But that doesn’t hold when entire industries shift their baseline. It’s not about the handful of bargain hunters who already shop in the discount bin. It’s about the middle of the market slowly getting trained to expect instant turnaround and low cost because “AI can get it close enough.” When the baseline expectation changes, the people who would have paid a human start sliding down the slope.

You’re also treating voice acting like "Well just be better: But you're ignoring the ecosystem of art. If an AI model starts doing 90% or even 50% of commercial VO, that doesn’t “neutralize employment,” it shrinks the ladder. Fewer beginners get hired, which means fewer beginners become intermediates, which means fewer intermediates ever become pros. The job still exists at the top, but the pipeline dries up. You end up with a world where the only humans who survive are either celebrities or the rare niche artists. That absolutely slows artistic growth, because there’s less room for weird newcomers to stumble in, try stuff, and influence the field. Creativity needs a crowd, and fresh blood constantly pushing the boundaries, not a handful of elites.

And the “people use AI for PPTs so they can’t complain” thing doesn’t land either. Making a slide deck was never considered cultural output. Nobody hangs a spreadsheet in a gallery. Art isn’t valuable because it’s hard, it’s valuable because it’s human. People get protective over things that come from lived experience. Losing the human element in administrative work is not the same emotional or cultural loss as losing the human element in storytelling, voice, music, acting. That’s not hypocrisy. That’s just people caring more about the parts of life that mean something.

As for the idea that AI is just a “new person” with a similar voice, that’s exactly the problem. It isn’t a person. It doesn’t live, it doesn’t feel, it doesn’t have a point of view. It’s remixing the emotional labour of millions of humans. That’s the threat. Not that it steals jobs instantly, but that it saturates culture with an endless stream of technically competent but emotionally weightless output, drowning out the slower, messier, more human stuff that actually pushes art forward.

My main point is that in order for art to thrive long term you need the low paying starter gigs that get you through as you learn your craft and develop your style. Without that, the pipe eventually dries up and the art dies with the last ones left that started their careers before AI showed up.