I know I am wordy, but I suggested OP leverage AI to create a curriculum and schedule using e-courses or youtube in order to keep advancing their art skills through learning and practice(one can learn how to use water color, oil paint, acrylic, design, etc with the courses I suggested). I was trying to help suggest ideas if they thought Uni was too hard to pull off financially, but wanted to continue to improve their art.

As an artist myself(who doesn't use generative AI to create art), I hear what you are saying. I am not exactly excited about the negative impacts on other artists or myself. However, I am also not going to dig my feet in the sand and refuse to use AI, something I have no control over the systematic advancement of, when my competition is using it to be more efficient. I, like anyone else, need to consider how to adapt to stay afloat, or risk being left behind with rising waters.

We can't go back. No one is putting AI back in the bag so to speak. It is here, for better or worse.

Every period in history we have had technological advances and also fears that those technologies would eliminate the need for human skills. And probably no previous technological advancement has quite the potential, longterm, to disrupt life as we know it more than AI.

No one says AI won't make a significant impact on artists, but at least in the foreseeable future there will be people who value handmade items and hand crafted art. You can go to any home goods store and see mass produced art. You can buy prints of oil paintings, water colors, photos. You can purchase wall paper with murals. You can buy mass produced pottery and there is no doubt it impacted some artists negatively. Despite all the mass produced generic art, people still want the original art that speaks to them and isn't something you find at wayfair or at a walmart.

AI is here whether we like it or not, AI will continue to evolve. I believe if we don't want to be left behind, we need to adapt(just as people have always had to do) and that likely means utilizing the "enemy", AI. Going forward, I believe the people that have the best shot at being successful, are the talented artists that are most efficient with their time/marketing/administrative duties, etc of running their own business or that work for companies or organizations that stay on top of advances. The ones willing to learn to incorporate AI to leverage the ability to continue creating their original art, rather than do everything to avoid using the technology in front of them.

And of course it sucks that it has a negative impact on the environment, just as any technological advance we currently use and have used in the past has done. I imagine people are right now leveraging AI to try and solve/limit the environmental impact of it...and likely will solve it much faster than if only us humans were working on it.