People who love thinking in false dichotomies like this one have absolutely no idea how much harder it is to “get paid for doing commercial/trendy art”.

It’s so easy to be a starving artist; and in the world of commercial art it’s bloody dog-eat-dog jungle, not made for faint-hearted sissies.

I've given this quite some thought and came to the conclusion that there is actually no choice, and all parties fall into the first category. It's just that some people intrinsically like working on commercial themes, or happen to be trendy.

Of course there are some artists who sit comfortably in the grey area between the two oppositions, and for these a little nudging towards either might influence things. But for most artists, their ideas or techniques are simply not relevant to a larger audience.

Yeah, but I guess wider. It's like the discussion would turn into "Don't use oil colors, then you don't get to do the fun process of mixing water and color together to get it just perfect" while maybe some artists don't think that's the fun process, and all the other categories, all mixed together, and everyone think their reason of doing it is the reason most people do it.

With LLMs, if you did the first in the past, then no matter what license you chose, your work is now in the second category, except you don't get a dime.

It's not.

It's:

- Making art because you enjoy working with paint

- Making art because you enjoy looking at the painting afterward