It's already replacing artists; that's why they're up in arms. People don't need stock photographers or graphic designers as much as they used to.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4602944

I know that artists don’t like AI, because it’s trained on their stolen work. And yet, AI can’t create a sprite sheet for a 2d game.

This is because it can steal a single artwork but it can’t make a collection of visually consistent assets.