It is interesting that visual artists and software engineers are basically in the same boat creatively, if not economically. That is, the key thing they did, their craft, their imagined value to society – all that turns out to be absurdly mechanizable. Nobody is going to be paying you for that any more.
So you have to pivot, if you'll excuse the jargon. Change your purpose in life, or at least, the marketable side of your purpose, the thing that people will pay you for.
On this point, software engineers are in pretty good shape – if they are any good they are already adept at thinking in product-management terms, so now they just have to do nothing but that, basically. Not that AIs won't learn to do that kind of thing, but it means surfing the wave rather than being crushed by it. It's a challenge to the entire field but not really an existential threat, there will always be a need for those who tend to the machines.
Visual artists on the other hand – I don't know what they are supposed to do. Some of course will embrace the new tools (I'm a fan of Kelly Bosche Kelly Boesch🏳️🌈 on X: "‘Everybody’s Got Their Thing’, one of my favorite things to say. Wrote this one about the things we are all drawn to individually. Images: Midjourney Animation: VEO Lyrics by me and song made using Suno ai aiart music dance" / X) https://x.com/kellyeld/status/2103483156850692560/video/1
but not everybody can do that.
And there is something creepy about her videos. They embrace the machine and allowing youreslf to be entranced by them is letting yourself become more machinelike. (I don't mean to be critical, I love them but also feel like I'm in an endless surrealist shopping mall).
Ken's friends lightshow thing
In both cases our hand-work has been absorbed into industrial slurry and sold back to us.
As a software engineer, I say, that's life, I was already an open-source advocate, this just forces the issue.
As an artist – well I'm not an artist so I don't know, but I'd be pretty damn pissed off.