"Oh no, all my quality work won't be in the next marvel movie or in mcdonalds' next happy-meal promo campaign, darn. Guess I'll have to make and sell something else."

~ Literally every artist with a modicum of talent, ambition and a brain

What's your favorite big-budget, AI-generated game/movie/show that you've given money to, again?

This is such a flimsy argument that it's barely worth responding to. People by-and-large are absolutely sick of Marvel slop and still seek quality art elsewhere; this is not a novel concept, nor will it be outmoded by the introduction of AI. The internet and entertainment industry at large is still actively exploding with monetized, unique, quality content because not everybody wants slop; most people are actively sick of it. Talented visual artists are still and will continue to be hired in the entertainment industry and will also continue to be able to independently release stuff online because they have their own individual perspective and the x-factor of "human creativity" that AI slop just cannot compete with. Interesting that you didn't address that, but what's also interesting is you're touching upon the reason most people are mad; AI models tend to churn out mediocre work, and people feel threatened because they aren't good enough at their craft to compete with it, so instead of becoming better they scream at anybody trying to advance the technology of their particular discipline for taking away extremely easy kinds of work that they barely had to do anything to get before (patreon commissions, etc.). Work a tad harder, try to express yourself more effectively and I promise you somebody will value your work above the forgettable music from "The Eternals". People with talent tend to break through if they try hard enough, it's not rocket science.

And I addressed the budget-cut thing earlier, so no I am not acting the way you described. Budget cuts are not an AI problem, they're a capitalism problem, as I stated previously. Please read.

INB4 people scream "survivorship bias". No, you're just not good enough, and you'd rather scream and yell at sensible takes from every expert in their field or craft than accept that fact. Legitimately. I know you don't like hearing that, but you need to accept it in order to improve. Get better at your craft. If you can't make stuff with greater quality than AI slop, you're not going to be capable of making things that resonate with people anyway. AI will never be able to do this, and this kind of quality creates sales. AI will be used, sure, but it will be leveraged to improve efficiency, not replace artists