Like I suppose many of us, I had a conversation with an artist friend about this very topic. They are concerned about it. Some of the generated results are impressive and surely can sufficiently replace some subset of the current human output.
But! Seeing DALL-E artwork from a bird’s eye view, I am more and more convinced that it’s just another tool, not a replacement: It is amazing good at producing unexpected results, and just like GPT3, it does so by regurgitating what is already out there, remixing it in somewhat interesting ways. This is an especially useful tool to quickly produce mood boards, or communicate an artistic intent. However it is not a replacement for the kind of thinking required to produce good artwork.
But! Seeing DALL-E artwork from a bird’s eye view, I am more and more convinced that it’s just another tool, not a replacement: It is amazing good at producing unexpected results, and just like GPT3, it does so by regurgitating what is already out there, remixing it in somewhat interesting ways. This is an especially useful tool to quickly produce mood boards, or communicate an artistic intent. However it is not a replacement for the kind of thinking required to produce good artwork.