Well put.
Big fan of the "Commercial illustrators will keep their jobs, but will mostly need to learn to use AI as a part of their workflow to maintain a higher pace of work" part.
I'm a sometimes-illustrator (but my style is pretty far from what Generative AI is doing), and I recently published a 1.1 of a game manual which uses Midjourney images. I'm currently investing in a "proper" illustrator because the MDJ images lack character, but it's also true that in a few months from now this might change: I'll stick with the illustrator to have more consistency in the images, but probably the AI could do a fancier job there.
Besides, the "things will change in 2 months" point is a good one, but it's been used since a year and a half and things haven't changed yet. Sure, the quality of the produced images improved, but not in a qualitative scale.
I'm a sometimes-illustrator (but my style is pretty far from what Generative AI is doing), and I recently published a 1.1 of a game manual which uses Midjourney images. I'm currently investing in a "proper" illustrator because the MDJ images lack character, but it's also true that in a few months from now this might change: I'll stick with the illustrator to have more consistency in the images, but probably the AI could do a fancier job there.
Besides, the "things will change in 2 months" point is a good one, but it's been used since a year and a half and things haven't changed yet. Sure, the quality of the produced images improved, but not in a qualitative scale.
Side note: the link civitai to leads to https://sambleckley.com/writing/civitai.com/images which is a dead link.