Today, only a highly privileged slice of the population can make a living making art. Nearly everyone who enjoys making art can't make a living off of it, and even the vast majority of people trying to do it full time still can't make ends meet (hence the cliche of the starving artist). But everyone can make art as a hobby if they'd like, that's what almost all artists do, and that will continue to be true as AI advances.
So I don't see AI art as changing careers much. Even if AI fully replaces human artists, all that means is the 0.1% of people who make a career off their art will have to join the rest of us 99.9% who only do art for the fun of it.
You sound like "making art" is only the painter in his Brooklyn studio. But it's video game designers, movie animators, videographers, graphic artists, and more that work in agencies and marketing departments of all companies that will be affected.
Those are mostly not well paid roles[0], and there are clearly many hobbyists in these areas also — looking at YouTube, all output is necessarily videography or animation, but what's the income distribution? I have a channel, no money from it (not that this was ever the point).
[0] Unless you're doing furry art, but that's only because furries are "suspiciously wealthy".
> Today, only a highly privileged slice of the population can make a living making art.
I think this is less true than it's been in centuries or perhaps all of history. Artistry is widespread, anyone can do it, and many choose to pursue it even though the pay isn't going to be great; in preindustrial times even having access to the ability to create art was quite limited as were the media types that existed.
So I don't see AI art as changing careers much. Even if AI fully replaces human artists, all that means is the 0.1% of people who make a career off their art will have to join the rest of us 99.9% who only do art for the fun of it.