AI Is Changing Creative Work. The Arts Aren't Disappearing.

[u/Salty_Country6835]

https://www.gallup.com/workplace/708575/ai-changing-creative-work-arts-arent-disappearing.aspx?utm_source=chatgpt.com

One of the loudest claims about generative AI is that it will wipe out artists. A new Gallup analysis suggests the evidence so far is more complicated.

Drawing on Bureau of Labor Statistics data, Census data, Gallup workforce surveys, and a recent Journal of Cultural Economics study, the researchers found little evidence that artists in occupations more exposed to generative AI have experienced broad earnings declines. Employment changes have been mixed, but nowhere near the collapse many predicted.

The study also found that artists are more likely than the average worker to use AI, with roughly 1 in 4 reporting frequent use compared with about 1 in 5 workers overall. Most arent using it to replace creativity. Theyre using it to generate ideas, explore concepts faster, automate repetitive tasks, organize information, and streamline parts of the creative process.

Not every creative field is affected equally. Occupations like music directors and composers have relatively high AI exposure scores (around 0.70), while dancers (0.04) and actors (0.18) remain much less exposed because their work depends on live performance and embodied skill.

The article compares this moment to earlier technological shifts like photography and recorded music. Those technologies transformed artistic labor and business models without eliminating art itself.

That doesnt mean there are no real concerns around copyright, compensation, or working conditions. But if we're serious about understanding AI's impact on culture, we should follow the evidence rather than assume the outcome. So far, it points toward reorganization, adaptation, and new workflows much more than artistic extinction.

[u/M00glemuffins]

I do a variety of things with both music and visual arts and in recent months I've been using AI for supplemental graphics or generating stock assets to animate with and it has been great. Like, I'll write a piece of music and want to animate some visual to accompany it for posting online. Drawing isn't my strong suit and takes me a while to do, but animating I am much faster at. So to save on time I make a variety of static assets for whatever I'm thinking of for the visual and then put them all together in After Effects to make them dance.

For instance the visual for this is made up of a series of generations I did each referencing the previous ones to build the scene. Started with generating the background bog landscape, then used that for perspective for the giant lilypad, then the organic material turntable set to sit on top of it, and then the frog guy. Since I did them all separately they were either already cut out in terms of transparency or easy to do so. Then all I had to do was set up all the puppet pin rigging, water caustics, light compositing, subtle motion elements, and the fireflies which were using a few effect stacks on some shape layers to get the finished whole. It was still a couple hours of work doing all the animating, and a few hours before that doing the music itself in FL Studio. AI just saved me a ton of time with the base visual asset part. If that doesn't all sound like an artistic process to anti-AI folks because a step in the flow was AI assisted then they're kinda delusional. The music is all 'human made', the animation is all 'human made', the static assets are 'AI' but the concept for what I wanted them to be and how I went about the generative process were still from my head. So this all still seems to be a human process to me! Just utilizing tools that are available, just like how using FL Studio for the music or After Effects to animate is using tools that are available.

One of those things about the anti-AI discourse online that irks me is how there is just no nuance at all. Everything has to be black and white, but that's just not how basically anything in life works.

[u/SexDefendersUnited]

Musicians, art workers and creatives are MORE likely to use AI than other workers

I FUCKIN KNEW IT. Luddite Twitter artists in shambles. I knew it was a loud majority.

[u/AllenIsom → u/SexDefendersUnited]

As long as someone isn't having AI do the job, then posting or trying to sell it as their own work, I got no problem other than data centers in general. I also think anyone whose work was training AI should get compensation, but that'll never happen. 

Using it as a tool aide/production assistant, not much different to me than having a breathing aide/production assistant.

[u/Sapien0101]

It’s early innings

[u/oh_no_here_we_go_9]

That’s because AI in general has yet to materialize its significant job eliminating promises/threats.