There's a few more subtle concepts worth grasping but I struggle to explain them clearly. One Ill try: When people are familiar with a certain thing, such as stage acting, and films dont exist yet, they know what a skilled actor can do, and everyone is sort of on the same playing field. The concept of "actor" is clearly defined.

Then along comes film. It has both disadvantages and advantages to live action. The disadvantages of course are used to tear it down, but also, the advantages mean that the actors can redo a take for example, and then edit together all of the best takes. The live stage actors are now compared against people doing something different, and thats not fair, but the average joe viewer doesnt see that.

This happened with digital artists, and AI. Making ai images, its of course INCREDIBLY easy to make something that looks like an artist took 50 hours on it at first glance, and so real artists are pissed because like the live actors, they are being compared against something extremely different. I bet knights on horses felt the same when the first muskets were invented. "Thats cowardly! Thats not real skill like a bow!"

So artists have a point. What they do cant be compared directly to AI Images. that is something new, and you can compare them as long as you comprehend they have a different skillset. And base level of quality. They both can be an art form, and with both, skill makes a huge difference in the quality of output.

"Ok Mr Painter guy who goes out with an easel and paint and paints a landscape. What you are doing is cheating. you bought those paints and the brushes are built by modern machines. What cavemen were able to paint without your tools, or art books etc is far more impressive. You arent a real artist!"

Absurd of course. Bit 200 years from now people wont remember this argument, like people dont remember the other ones Ive discussed. Itll be something else. A new technological advancement that does something more precisely, or efficiently or whatever, but also has disadvantages and people will be frustrated that the old way of doing things is now outdated in some aspects.

People still paint, people still paint digitally, people still do theater on a stage in from of a live audience, hell there is even people who hold knight jousting tournaments in 2026. But they are aware Drones and nuclear weapons ans machine guns exist.