IMO SD and the AI tools are just fantastic compliments to the rest of your artistic kit, just like photoshop and blender etc, but are still just tools in the kit rather than the whole kit

People who think they replace artists are not seeing the real picture. The only artists they replace are the lowest end artists, and all those artists have to do is adapt to the tech and they will still be relevant too.

Even with SD I still run into tuns of situations where I need to use photoshop to tweak something or need to draw something, and I instantly run into the limit of my artistic skill, because I'm not a real artist.

Which IMO, is the gap between an "ai artist" and an actual artist. AI can make some really beautiful stuff (one of my favorites I've seen), but as soon as you need to customize it or make fine tweaks you start having to fight the AI rather than work with it