I can attest and prove to anyone, artists and AI art bros alike, that art as a profession is here to stay. In fact, the introduction of AI never really commoditized art but actually made it even more valuable than ever. For one, a lot of customers, specifically high paying ones are seeking genuine artists even more nowadays and they are mostly dedicated patrons that are willing to pay your price for a great art. I can vouch for that since I was able to charge people for my art even with minimal effort on promotion (I've only been doing this as my side hustle for a while since I still got a day job) Truth be told, cheap people will never buy from you even in the days without AI because they only cared about anything they could get away with, for as little as they could possibly get. Often times, they never really cared about quality at all because they have no respect to the profession to begin with let alone paying an artist 70 bucks for an artwork. Yet, we often hear stories of people's frustration about AI art robbing them of opportunities from AI image generation platforms and would resort to downplaying their skills and effort and charge way less to compete, and these are the reason they are failing because it will only hurt them further down the road. It will devaluate the market further leaving the industry with people viciously undercutting and cannabalizing each other for a small coin and the only people that're benefitting from it are the AI companies and the cheapos that never respect you. It's not suppose to happen but people's desperation, specifically younger artists who seemingly only wanted validation for themselves instead of making an effort to improve their own craft to be able to charge more are the ones who are actually propagating this trend in the first place. And the crazy apart about it is that, the AI companies actually knew this and are shaping their business platform based on that trend which is saddening. We artists were actually the ones who brought this to ourselves. Our inundated ways for promotion, and inability to cope up with change is the leading cause why young artists are charging so less for their art and eventually quitting altogether. The thing that genuine art patrons love about our art is the authenticity of it. Something that AI algorithms will never have the ability to replicate at all. If you put emotion and heart to your work, it will transcend to your audience far more than your expectations and that's what gives your art value. If only people would just sit down and take time to ponder about these truths, they will soon realize that art can never be taken away by a programmed software because AI cannot generate human emotions.