I'd say there's strong disdain from people who make a living producing art, but it's not nearly as universal with artists outside that group. I do resent people who have a monetary interest in an activity being presented as the only ones with a valid interest. I have seen more people becoming interested in personal creative expression since diffusion models, than I have ever seen before in my life, and that's a good thing.

Well, also, I mean, the output is generally bad.

(AI 'art' also has the fascinating, and possibly unique, property that, the more you look at it, the worse it is; it is fractally bad, in that the badness tends to crop up in small details more than anywhere else. I actually kind of enjoy it in small doses for this reason; it's fun to play "spot the broken thing".)

Something I read elsewhere was "if someone is using an AI avatar, they were never going to be your customer anyway".

I used to commission avatars every year or two from a specific artist. It wasn't super cheap (hundreds of dollars). At the end of the day though, spending hundreds of dollars, waiting weeks, and then maybe getting 85% of what I wanted doesn't make sense when I could instead spend ~$0, wait 30 seconds, and get 98% of what I want.

In my view, artists should be moving up the 'stack'. If they are a commission artist, they should be having customers come to them with their '98% efforts' or only taking on commissions that either mean too much, too elaborate for AI, or otherwise sensitive.

Humans want art. Humans love pretty things. AI will never replace the entire need for artists. I see it as getting rid of the bad commissioners (price sensitive, beggars, etc) and making it easier for people to express themselves thereby making an artist's job easier to extract info from their commissioners.

How can you trust that the product is “faithful” if a human makes it? You look at it.

And if you don’t know LOTR lore well enough to be able to do that, why do you care?