Applying your logic, did you feel bad for seamstresses when industrial revolution took off? did you feel bad for hardware manufacturers in America when they were outsourced to China? Art is also a form of labor and whoever can produce quality at quantity wins. Idealizing art in some sort of religious idolation is just plain silly. We haven't had the Picassos or Mozarts or Oscar Peterson for quite some time now yet the world is just fine. People play playlists in front of millions of live crowd and get accolade for it vs real instruments. Times change, technology change and art changes.

You either adapt or go hungry just like everybody else and art shouldn't be exempt from the mechanics of supply and demand.

I almost agree with you that this is about quality, but I still feel that the context in which art comes from influences how I perceive it.

Take, for example, a track by Fontaines D.C., a band from Ireland that writes extensively about the lived social and political experience. Knowing where they are from and the general themes of their work makes their tracks feel authentic, and you can appreciate the worldview they have and the time spent producing the art, even if it does not align with your own tastes.

Trying to create something of the same themes and quality from a prompt of “make me an Irish pop rock track about growing up in the country” suddenly misses any authenticity.

Maybe this is what I am trying to get at, but like I said, I feel some conflict about this, as I personally value these tools for productivity

I hear this but this is not the industrial revolution buddy.