A lot of art created now, especially for film/ media, already goes through a similar process that AI just automates and accelerates. Several big concept artists I have met have lamented on the fact that many artists in the industry basically churn compositions out through mashing references they gather on google images or asset stores, not to mention just straight photobashing, which has made a lot of the concepts produced fairly derivative and homogenized since everything is just referencing what google images serves or assets that everyone else uses.
Even fine artists have likely had their practice influenced by the whims of what the algorithms on major social media outlets are willing to favor in order to get engagement. It kind of feels like many creatives have been incentivized into becoming slaves to these processes, which has in turn made them seem replaceable with AI.
This sounds similar to complaints I've heard about music for film/TV. Often stock music is used as a placeholder during post-production, and then composers are told by producers to just rework the stock music instead of being given time to make something original. This leads to most shows having very "samey" soundtracks.
strong concur, evaluating the creative processes requires acknowledging influences, and if pop culture referrence go beyond inspiration and become a core influence in style then the art aspect becomes industrializable, and in this case replaceable by AI.
Even fine artists have likely had their practice influenced by the whims of what the algorithms on major social media outlets are willing to favor in order to get engagement. It kind of feels like many creatives have been incentivized into becoming slaves to these processes, which has in turn made them seem replaceable with AI.