[numpad0]

Online artists are more likely to be consultants and marketing experts. They "flip burgers", or rather make PowerPoints and lays out magazine articles, 12 hours a day for 8 days a week anyway. So AI only "financially" hurts them in the sense that it hurts their dopamine income.

[falsaberN1]

This is more like it. Every dedicated artist I know does something else to pay the bills, from actual burger flippers to sysadmins like me. They will make time to draw things because they simply like doing it.

[numpad0]

I really think this is why a lot of discussions and projects around generative AI and AI-relevant art don't go well. It's a one-way outside influence that also affect economy as second order effect to cultural impacts. Because economical impacts of these online arts are mere downstream effects, manipulations in that domain just don't work.