> In spite of the flaws, not having to compensate creators was seemingly incentive enough for some people to switch over.

This doesn’t quite land because free is nothing special. The Internet has lots of free content that nobody cares about. There needs to be something other than “it’s cheaper” that attracts people’s interest.

One reason AI art is becoming popular is that there are tools that make it easy and fun to make your own. And I expect that the tools will get better.

I suppose it’s true that being able to take selfies quickly and easily competes with professional photography. But it doesn’t feel like direct competition when you wouldn’t have considered hiring a photographer or a portrait artist.