Elevator music is a surprisingly profitable commercial niche. For that matter, there are always going to be soulless, insipid, overused imitations of real art that gets turned into staggering commercial success precisely because it’s bland and meaningless. “Live, love, laugh” for example.

Not everything has to have meaning and significance, but we also have the right to judge it when it should.

The problem with AI is that a lot of artists literally rely at least to some extent on the money that flows from that soulless commercial drivel, either with their eyes fully open to the situation, or by convincing themselves that it does have meaning to somebody, or just themselves if nobody else. They need to pay the bills and put food on the table and a huge source of that comes from commercial art work which has a high bar for visual impact and a very low bar for ideas or meaning.

If AI replaces the meaningless filler content of the art world, how do artists survive if that’s their bread and butter? It’s never going to directly replace real human art, but if it removes their meal ticket, the outcome will still be the same. Soon there will be almost no real human artists left, as they’ll start to become prohibitively expensive, which will drive more people to AI in a self-reinforcing feedback loop until only a handful of “masters” and a bunch of literal starving artists trying to become them without ever earning a penny. The economics of the situation are pretty dire and it’s increasingly hard to picture a future for human art that doesn’t look bleak.

I’m planning to do my part to make sure exclusively human-made art is always the choice I’m going to make and pay for, but there are bigger forces at play here than you or me and I don’t think they’re going to push things in a happy direction. The enshittification of art will happen, is already happening, and we’re just along for the ride.