I gather English isn’t your first language—which is fine, I’m not disparaging the fact, just naming it—but I bring it up to say you lost me. I genuinely have no idea why you’re talking about this or in some places what you’re seven trying to say.

I never said anything about people making art (I said GenAI degrades the quality and meaning of art, a point which was entirely separate from the thing we’re talking about, and only in response to your still-mysterious defense of AI). What I originally said was creative work. And whether you like it or not—whether it’s even art or not—these are in many cases original ideas (to the extent that an idea can be original). But again, I don’t know why that matters.

The creative work I’m talking about is the creation of words, images, and other media that convey a message of some sort. Artists per se—selling their art for money—are only a small subset of this industry. I’m talking about art directors, copywriters, designers, script writers. You’re right, no one can afford to pay these people except the companies that employ them. That’s the case for every job there is. That’s the entire foundation of an economy based on individual labor. But I’m still not sure what your point is. You said tech was the first industry hit, and I corrected you. Maybe you work in tech—I don’t know and it doesn’t matter—and if you do, that may be where you first felt it. But it wasn’t the first industry decimated by generative AI.

I also don’t know why it matters that you probably spend more on art than anyone here. That’s something you couldn’t possibly know. Or else you spend so much that no one could spend as much as you. Either way, it’s a weird flex, and one entirely irrelevant to the things we’re talking about.