If are is a major part of someone's identity (strongly implied by calling them an "artist"), then it's hardly surprising that they would feel threatened and react emotionally to something that massively disrupts the creation of art and the viability of making a living from it.
I'm old enough to have had my design and publishing career evaporate underneath my feet because newsprint has mostly been replaced by the internet. I'm even old enough that I was part of replacing other people's careers with technology during the desktop publishing revolution. I remember when graphics tablets became a thing and how traditional pen and brush artists cried, "unfair!"
I always felt empathy for them, even back then. I feel empathy for my artist friends as well.
How can we ever have a better future if we keep trying to prevent change from disrupting our careers? In my experience, I've seen a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth, but these changes have always come no matter how hard people fought. On the other hand, I see people who try to adapt to these changes do quite well.
It's the part where I watch them hide their head in the sand that bothers me, not their anger. I want them to succeed. I think they have great eyes for color and line and those things are still super-valid long after the generative AI has replaced the pen and brush.
I don't want to watch my artist friends suffer. I am old enough to know that the effort to stop generative AI is almost certainly going to fail (just as all the previous efforts to prevent change failed), and it is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.
