However we might feel about it, there's no doubt that AI is here, and it will stay.
For me, the question has always been about the appropriate and most beneficial use of AI... my worry there is the humans, not the AI!
I remember some truism I read a while back; (mis)quoted as: "If AI automation is so great, why are we using AI to create paintings and compose music, while I still have to wash my dishes and do my laundry manually?"
Recently, a friend's life was — in essence — saved by the mediacal diagnostic powers of AI. She queried using her entire medical history and lab results... and AI came up with an accurate "most likely" diagnosis that doctors had completely missed, mostly because no doctor is a speciaist across 50 fields, but AI can collate and analyze that data.
Using AI to create your written content because you're too lazy or inept yourself simply tells me that you're in the wrong field.
As you suggest, it's the story tellers that will thrive. At least... I hope you're right. I enjoy the creative period, and I'm damn sure not going to hand that off to automation, just in search of expediency.
Probably in the right field but efficient - is the cope.
I think part of the problem is looking at Content Creation. If one creates as a hobby versus one treating their content as a livelihood, the stakes tend to be higher and there's a mismatch on when is the use of AI going to be ok.
I wouldn't blame animators if they incorporated some AI into their CGI because traditional animation takes a lot of time and costly. The end output may not even be so obvious that AI has been used in some parts that it breaks immersion.
However, I'd still judge an artist based on how much AI assist they have incorporated in their workflow to produce their content. Because some parts of the routine tedious work doesn't require active critical thinking like automatically filtering drafted lines from the sketch then have AI generate the line art intended. This use is AI being a tool. But if AI had to lay out the composition and build the sketch from scratch, then that's just lazy.
Thanks for stopping by~