The lack of empathy is incredibly depressing...
Jobs have been automated since the industrial revolution, but this usually takes the form of someone inventing a widget that makes human labor unnecessary. From a worker's perspective, the automation is coming from "the outside". What's novel with AI models is that the workers' own work is used to create the thing that replaces them. It's one thing to be automated away, it's another to have your own work used against you like this, and I'm sure it feels extra-shitty as a result.
The whole point of art is human expression. The idea that artists can be "automated away" is just sad and disgusting and the amount of people who want art but don't want to pay the artist is astounding.
Why are we so eager to rid ourselves of what makes us human to save a buck? This isn't innovation, its self destruction.
In the sense that art is a 2D visual representation of something, or a marketing tool that evokes a biological response in the viewer, art is easy to automate away. This is no different than when the camera replaced portraitists. We've just invented a camera that shows us things that don't exist.
In the sense that art is human expression, nobody has even tried to automate that yet and I've seen no evidence that expressionary artists are threatened.
You're in for a rude awakening when you get laid off and replaced with a bot that creates garbage code that is slow and buggy but works and so the boss gets to save on your salary. "But it's slow, redundant, looks like it was made by some who just copy and pasted endlessly from stackoverflow" but your boss won't care, he just needs to make a buck.