The question of what artificial intelligence means for human creative work is not primarily a technical question but a philosophical one: what are we actually valuing when we value human-made things, and does that value survive the presence of a machine that can produce similar surfaces? If what we value is the trace of a particular human consciousness working through a particular problem over time, then the question becomes whether AI-generated work carries that trace — and for most serious purposes, it does not. The tool is real and will change the conditions of creative work; the threat it poses is not to making but to the economic arrangements that have, imperfectly, supported makers.
Each step builds on the last.