When I first used a modern VR headset, it felt so real to me that I felt like I was truly in the virtual space. It was an amazing and memorable feeling.
After several years of using one intermittently, it doesn't feel any more real than my monitor. My brain taught itself to see all the elements that make it artificial, and while it's still amazing as a technological feat, it no longer feels real at all.
I feel that a similar thing happened to me with the latest round of generative AI improvements. A year ago they felt amazing and almost sentient. Now my brain has started to internalize the patterns in the output, and while I'm still impressed and amazed by the technological prowess and data summarization utilities, it no longer feels amazing.
I think if AI is to truly get a foothold in art, it would first need to have a capacity to generate a new voice and viewpoint and imbue its work with the kind of fresh meaning that separates a good piece of writing from a boring or empty genre work. That said, I do think AI is even now ready to make inroads in 'boring or empty genre work'. When I ask AI to write something, while I don't see artistic merit in the output, I do see the same level of merit that I see in a mediocre human written piece.
I guess if I am scared by anything, it is this: if a great human artist often begins their life building/selling boring and derivative works, and AI displaces the market for paying humans for boring and derivative works, then will fewer artists have an opportunity to first wallow in, and then transcend, mediocrity?
If that is true, then I suppose I am worried, and I understand where Nick Cave is coming from.