A bit of both columns. It's the next stage of advancement and it offers a large productivity boom. The large scale point is to just automate everything, and art just proved to be easier since it's in many ways a software only activity while stuff like manual labour is harder to gain data on and requires new hardware to replicate.

The point is that if something is possible to make with the current available it'll almost certainly be made by someone and missing out on it can be dangerous. It's not that they specifically hate artists or anything, in the same way that the car industry wasn't made to specifically destroy or spite the horse industry. It's just a more productive and efficient way of doing things.