There's the argument that there is some inherent value in works created in full or in part by a human. Yes, but that argument doesn't extend to every kind of work. Should we get rid of printers altogether in favor of scribes because there is more value in the scribe being a human than the printer being a machine?
And there is an important point behind this. You're free to think that artistic works in particular belong to some special category of work that others do not, but you have to actually demonstrate it and not state it blindly. I could place the same value statements on the comparison between a sewing machine and manual sewing and you'd have no particular right to question me. Why is it suddenly that art in particular is being singled out as opposed to any other human activity so aggressively?
Humans are capable of a variety of tasks, and they naturally assign a higher value to those which they themselves are capable of versus others. A carpenter might believe and hold the opinion that there is some higher value in the act of carpentry as compared to other forms of work, because that is a task he can perform well. An artist might believe that there is some higher value in art as compared to other forms of work because they can do it better than they can do other tasks, like carpentry itself for example.
Even more so, a person can believe that because they are at all capable of performing some task in any capacity, that it therefore follows that it has a higher value. A low-quality artist could think that they have a right or that we have an obligation by force to provide them with an income because they have that skill and took time to learn it so we must provide them a return on their investment.
Cars replaced horses. The horse riders clearly believed that they provided value to society that shouldn't be taken away, much as the scribes thought they had some particular importance that a printer does not provide. But that's an obviously massively biased and one-sided reasoning: they want to continue to get paid, and will take steps towards ensuring their continued need in the economy specifically to get paid, not merely because the value in their work is there on its own merits.
What is then the merit of an artist? That they are specifically good at what they do? That they exist at all regardless of their skill level, and certain rights automatically follow from their existence? That they are human or sentient or intelligent, and specifically that they are a human in itself as being a human as opposed to a machine and not as performing some specific task or action, like the nature of being an artist?
Clearly as far the end goal is concerned, namely the final artistic work, AI is somewhat competitive and with more time will likely be even more so. Hence the real problem isn't that the AI specifically will affect the economic value of human production. The manual sewer had already seen the effects of the sewing machine first hand and thus had to adapt to survive in a new environment. You could argue there's a certain quality to a scribe's work that a printer just can't replicate, but is that a specific action they perform purposefully, or the mere fact that they are human at all, regardless of whatever they are actually doing? Should we also replace printed packaging boxes with millions of hand-drawing overworked warehouse workers just to satisfy this criterion? Even better, why use a digital calculator when you can instead hire a person who's good with maths and give him a job opportunity?
I hear you saying, but art in particular is different in many ways than a calculator. Says who, though? The naturally self-interested artist themselves? If you asked a person experienced with stone tools whether they'd prefer power tools they can't operate, would they have an incentive to say yes? Is Tim Cook ever going to walk around in public with a Samsung and sing its praises? Either way, something else is doing your work better than you are. You just happen to think artwork is in a special category where a computer cannot philosophically think or obtain emotions or truly draw. But it still gets the job done regardless. It may not be technically "creative", but it sure performs all of the processes that just happen to lead to a creative end product very well.
