AI-Generated Content and the Visual Artist

In the New York Times article below, commercial illustrator Christof Niemann discusses the challenges artists face when confronted with AI-generated images. He makes many excellent points, and his illustrations that accompany his ideas are delightfully original. I can see why he is a successful illustrator. Please read the article here:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/06/23/magazine/ai-art-artists-illustrator.html
Then see my own comments on the topic below

My Take
My primary concern is the use of AI-generated images with respect to fine art, specifically painting.
First of all, I respect the choices of every artist who chooses to use AI in their creative process. And I will tell you why I personally will never use AI in any part of my artistic creative process. The first and foremost reason is that its use diminishes and atrophies an artist's creativity and imagination, while paradoxically making the art appear superior. It's much easier to tell a machine to come up with amazing images and ideas than for artists to have to go through the difficult work of doing it themselves.

Someone could argue, but why do it the old, hard way "by hand”? My argument is not whether it's old or new, but about what using AI may do to my cognitive skills and imagination.

Some have equated AI-generated images to the advent of photography and its impact on the artistic creative process over the past 150 years. Using a camera makes a person smarter because you have to activate your cognitive skills to select scenes to photograph. In contrast, AI-generated images are just handed to you, and then you curate them. "I'll take this one but not that one.” The AI artist has become a curator of images, not an originator. Related to this, recent studies have examined writers who use ChatGPT extensively for writing, revealing that their cognitive skills have declined significantly due to their reliance on the tool. One may assume that something similar would happen to a visual artist using images generated by AI. (Ask ChatGPT about the 2025 MIT study about the use of AI-generated content and the decline of cognitive function.)

It's a larger discussion than I can get into here, but these are some of my initial thoughts.