>What would you buy? $10 H&M or $100 hand-made shirt? - (My guess, if you could afford the later.)
This is an interesting example because even in the $100 case you are still talking about machine-augmentation. You can have a seamstress or a tailor customize patterns, using off the shelf textiles, for that order of magnitude price - but if you want to use custom built, exotic materials or many kinds combined, the cost is on the orders of thousands not hundreds. Also there is a large industry of just printing designs on stock-shirts, that has a different point effort-scale equilibria.
Thinking about how how automation disintermediates is very important. For animation, often productions have key-frame artists in the animation pipeline that define scenes, and then others that take though to flush out all the details of that scene. GenAI can potentially automate that process. You could still have the artist producing a keyframe, and can render that into a video.
Another big factor is style. One hypothesized reason that more impressionism, absurdism or abstract art all become styles is photography. Once cheap machine-produced photography became available, there is less need for a portrait artist. But further, it also is no longer high-status and others push trends alternative directions.
All the experiments and innovation going right now will definitely settle into a different set of roles for artists, and trends that they will seek to satisfy. Art-style itself will change as a result of both what is technically possible and also what is _not_ easily automatable in order to gain prestige.
What's killing art is this idea by a vocal minority of "artists" that they need to mass produce their work, enter the market, and attempt to make millions of dollars by selling and distributing it to millions.
That's not art. That's capitalism. That's competing to produce something that customers will want to buy more than what your competitors offer.
If you want to compete on the capitalistic marketplace, then compete on the capitalistic marketplace. But if you want to be an artist, be an artist.
Art is still alive and well and always will be. Every day I see people singing because they love singing, making pottery because they love making pottery, writing because they love writing. Whether other people love or enjoy their art, the artist may or may not care. Whether they can profit from their art, the artist may or may not care. But many billions of artists will keep creating, crafting, and designing day after day, and they will never be stopped by AI or anything else.
People do whatever they want with their own property. You have no right to steal it just because they want to monetise it. What’s killing art is stealing it en masse using procedural generators.
Jobs have never been less soul crushing, or more creative, in the history of humanity. And that becomes increasingly true every decade.
Do you know what a job does? What a company does? It contributes to society! It produces something that someone else values. That they value so much they're willing to pay for it. Being part of this isn't a bad thing. It's what makes society work.
A job/company entertains. It keeps things clean. It transports people to where they need to go. It produces. It gives people things they want. It creates tools, and paints, and nails, and shirts. I look out my window, and I see people delivering furniture, chefs cooking food and selling it out of trucks, keepers maintaining grounds, people walking dogs.
Being useful to the fellow members of your society for 40 hours a week is not "soul crushing."
(This is a response to your comment before you edited it.)
Find the intersection of something that people increasingly value, that you enjoy, and that you can compete at.
The best proof that people value something is that they're spending money for it. If people aren't spending money, they don't value it, and you probably don't want to go into it. If people aren't spending more and more money on it every year, then it's not increasing in value, and you probably don't want to go into it.
The best proof that you enjoy something is that you enjoyed it in the past. Things you liked as a kid, activities that excited you as a young adult, etc., are often the best candidates.
Look for intersections of the two things above. Do some Googling, do some research.
Finally, you need to be able to compete at it. If you do something worse than everyone else does it, then no one will pick you, because you're probably not being helpful. The simple answer to this is to practice to make yourself better. But most people don't want to do that. A better answer to this is to be more unique, so you can avoid the competition. Don't do a job that has a title, a college major, and millions of talented applicants. It's not that helpful to society to do something a hundred million other people can already do, which is why there's more competition and lower wages.
When you find the intersection of what's valued and what you enjoy, call up some people in those fields and ask what's rare. What in their area is needed. What are they missing. What is no one else doing.
Or just start your own company. That's the easiest way to be unique. But it's hard.
Finally, if you feel you're too "mid," then make sure your standards aren't crazy. Don't let society tell you that you need to be a millionaire with a yacht and designer clothes to be happy. Get a normal 9 to 5 with some purpose in it, that you can be proud of, that others appreciate. Live within your means and don't stress yourself out financially. Spend your free time doing things you like. Take care of your health, find good relationships, and treasure them. That's a happy life at any income. I know a bunch of miserable depressed rich people who are very good at making money and very bad at health/relationships/etc., which is the real stuff that life is made out of.