Most professional artists will be unemployed and hobbyist artists using AI seems to be kind of against the point of creating art for the art of creation.
But for one-click self-expression, AI tools will certainly come in handy.
It kind of depends on the type of artist. I use it to illustrate my stories, for example, and I'd be upset if someone claimed my writing doesn't count as art-
But I've spent well over a decade learning to write. I don't have any skill in drawing, and I don't earn any money from my writing. (...and last time I tried to hire an artist, they bit my head off when I offered an example of what I was after.)
The dawn of the post-work age! C :
.. nearly everyone will become unemployed five years from now (when AGI / humanoid robots hit mainstream adoption). The economical paradigm will have to change inevitably. Now it's on us to nudge it towards a nice and chill open source economy with open access infrastructure and cybersyn-like global federated resource stream coordination instead of the competitive vortex of death, madness & despair we have now.
Mainstream media said the same thing about nuclear energy, steam engines, integrated circuits, and a dozen other technologies since the dawn of civilization.
It never manifested though, and people still work and produce like they did for thousands of years.
Humans are surprisingly adept at coming up with new kinds of work.
IMO the bigger "risk" is that we will extinct ourselves in the next few hundred years, but that is a different discussion.
But I've spent well over a decade learning to write. I don't have any skill in drawing, and I don't earn any money from my writing. (...and last time I tried to hire an artist, they bit my head off when I offered an example of what I was after.)
So I'll use AI art, because it's that or no art.