How some artists are incorporating DALL-E, Midjourney, and other AI tools into their work, while others remain anxious about AI's impact on their livelihoods
Forward-thinking designers are willing to embrace the technology — without relinquishing human creativity's central role
Context & Ripple Effects
AI image tools were already moving from experimentation into paid creative workflows: Midjourney users were producing client concept art and reducing reliance on stock art. This story captures the resulting split between practitioners who treat generation as part of a process and those concerned about its effect on paid work.
That tension was not confined to visual art. Hollywood’s creative labor debate similarly set cost-saving ambitions against fears of displacement, while later coverage showed generative tools extending into complex architectural design work.
First-order effects
- Artists who adopt DALL-E, Midjourney and similar tools can incorporate rapid generation into their workflows while retaining human direction and judgment as the differentiator.
- Artists whose work overlaps with readily generated visual output face more immediate uncertainty over the value and availability of commissions.
Second-order effects
- Clients may compare AI-assisted concepting with stock imagery and conventional commissioned work, increasing pressure on illustrators and adjacent visual suppliers to demonstrate distinctive human value.
- Creative teams and studios gain a practical reason to define where AI can accelerate ideation versus where authorship, craft and client trust still require human-led production.
Third-order effects
- If adoption broadens, creative work is likely to be reorganized around hybrid workflows: generation becomes a common production input, while differentiation shifts toward direction, selection and final execution.
- The persistent livelihood concern points to a longer-running negotiation over how productivity gains are distributed between tool providers, commissioning buyers and creative workers.
The trend: Generative AI is becoming a commercial creative-workflow layer, reshaping the boundary between low-cost production assistance and human-led authorship.