I know a lot of people who do art for a living. They are basically treated like shit by capitalism. Nobody respects how much time, effort and training goes into art. Art is fucking hard. You get paid next to nothing for it.
Unless you sell your soul to work in advertising/marketing. Then you get paid only slightly more than nothing. You are also now expected to churn out a fuckton of art each day if you want to keep your job. Enjoy watching everything unique, creative and special be sucked out of your art by higher-ups that demand safe, soulless corporate art. Enjoy being told you're expendable and easily replaced so you work an extra 5 hours unpaid that night. Working conditions in some advertising agencies are close to resembling sweatshops with how they exploit their junior artists in particular. I knew someone that used to work 7 days a week, even though they weren't paid on weekends. They worked until midnight (unpaid overtime) only to start again at 8am the next day again. That's how 'competitive' the industry is. They eventually had a nervous breakdown and changed careers.
Art being some bourgeoise thing where a beret-wearing snob sells a photo of piss for 5 trillion dollars is not the norm (as funny as that would be). The norm is backbreaking work for very little in return, like every other job title that isn't CEO, Manager, or Landlord.
So yeah, even though I'm fascinated by AI art and don't think it would necessarily be a bad thing if it was being used in a socialist setting, I think artists have every right to be upset that tech bros are finding a way to suck even more life out of art.
In short, creatives get treated like shit. Thinking art isn't real work is chud-level shit.
i work in a creative field and yeah i started because i was a painter and dedicated my life to it and when it was time to get a job the most realistic thing was to be a designer in a marketing firm which quickly was hell. everything was soulless and not just soulless but actively oppressive towards the employees and especially the customers. i did work long hours, often working 9-9PM because the higher ups had a "hare-brained idea" that needed to be completed in less than one day so it could be tested the next day and probably thrown out by the third day. an insane work culture. so i left to do freelance and now i make significantly less money (very significantly less than median wage also) than before but at least i'm not treated like shit and abused.
i had a friend who came to america to work in the music industry. he was a very talented mix engineer and he worked with artists you've definitely listened to and heard. pop stars, very famous people. he was abused like fuck at that job, working for 24 hours straight, keeping studios open for artists who never showed up after 8 hours of prep, people got fired for putting the mixing straws at the coffee table upside down. the line for people wanting a job was down the block essentially. you could get fired for nothing because somebody would replace you right away. he left that abusive environment to do freelance work where he wasn't treated like shit and, like me, he now gets paid less than a mcdonald's wage to produce music for a youtube channel with hundreds of thousands subscribers. he works behind the scenes and gets paid a fraction of what they profit off of what is essentially his work. to be fair the singer who sings on his tracks gets paid the vast majority of the money and she's a creative too, but moreso than a creative she is an influencer.
anyway, these are two concrete examples from my life exemplifying what you're talking about here. as far as the ai art discussion goes, i assume these are techbros who think tech will change the world and we just need to adapt. in a sense, that's true, but the sad reality is that this is all in service of capital and beyond the argument about living wages for artists (which is super important) it's also the death of art as a form of expression for the human experience. if ai art defines the next era then we will not have 'art' we will simply have data mashed together.
there was also a recent discussion about how art is bougie decadence and i don't agree with that at all either but i do empathize with the sentiment that rich people can pay to win at art. trust me, i've watched it happen with a personal sense of jealousy my entire life, but that's not a reason to treat artists like shit or to proclaim that art is not working class.