I feel like you're conflating two issues.pdub wrote: ↑Thu Jan 05, 2023 2:24 pm "Hey I need an illustration of a vampire bat for this article."
"Sure, I have a list of illustrators who we usually go with, range from 500 to 1500 per piece."
"Oh, hm, that's cool. But like, I've heard of this thing called Stable Diffusion. And it's free. AND it mimics tons of artists styles. So can you just sign up for that and pick a vampire bat?"
"I'm a producer."
"And now you're an artist!"
Obsolescence (by way of technology) is just part of, I don't know, being alive and working a job for income. I don't feel bad for people who made money off, like, fax machines and pagers and Palm Pilots, until other developments squashed the demand to near-zero.
That's life.
The other issue you raise - the fact that technology is using people's work (without compensation) to make them obsolete - is a much trickier one.
But they're not the same issue.