Illustrators and AI: when the market splits in two
When a machine does the passable version of your craft for free, the market splits in two. A lesson from illustrators that fits any trade.
Last week I watched a group of illustrators argue about AI on X, and it helped me put a name to something I'd already been seeing in other trades. When a machine learns to do the passable version of your work for free, the market splits in two. It doesn't drop evenly. It breaks into two pieces with two different kinds of clients, and almost no one tells you which of the two you're now fighting for.
A concrete case before the theory
Between June 24 and 30 there was a back-and-forth in Spanish about AI and illustration. One affected artist, Ismael Álvarez, told it plainly: companies that used to commission illustrations from him stopped, because now they solve it with AI, for free. It's in the thread where the illustrator told it firsthand. He added something more uncomfortable. He thinks the tool is training people to stop valuing work made by hand. That's not a market figure. It's an observation about a client's habits, and over time that weighs more.
The other reading: whoever was going to pay is still paying
In that same thread, the illustrator behind the anchor post offered the counterpoint. Whoever truly values a piece made by a person will keep commissioning it. And whoever generates an image for free in two seconds was never going to part with money for a commission. Her thesis, in one line: you didn't lose a client, you lost someone who never was one.
Both positions can be true at once. That's the clue. That anchor post drew somewhere around 5,000 views.
Why the market splits in two
Put the two readings together and the pattern shows up, and it carries over to any trade. When the passable version of something becomes free, your client list divides. On one side sits the client who never noticed the difference between your work and a cheap substitute. As it happens, that was the lowest-margin client, the one who haggled the most. You're going to lose them, and not through any fault of yours. On the other side sits the client who does notice the difference. You keep that one on a single condition: that you show it to them. If you don't point it out, they treat it as if it weren't there.
Show the judgment, don't just have it
One of the people in the thread proposed something practical: record the process behind each piece so the client can see with their own eyes where the value goes. I think it's the best idea in the thread. The client who pays more isn't paying for the final result, which the machine imitates well. They're paying for the decisions they don't see: what you discarded, what you tried, the reason behind each choice. It's the same underlying question as what you pay a consultancy for once AI does the easy part. If the judgment isn't shown, it isn't billed.
Two nuances worth not skipping
The first: the part that dies first is the entry tier. The small commissions, the cheap jobs a beginner used to learn the craft on and stay afloat between bigger projects. One illustrator in the thread put it clearly: those small and mid-sized clients were the way in. It's the entry rung that's being pulled away, and not only in illustration.
The second: some clients already penalize visible AI. Another participant said that when he sees a brand using AI in its marketing, he loses interest in the product. It's a real segment, still small, that rewards handmade work out of conviction.
It isn't new, and that helps
Another illustrator reminded everyone this is cyclical. It happened to web design when WordPress and the free platforms arrived: the basics became a commodity, and the craft moved toward where the tool couldn't reach. The way out he proposed was to learn to talk to the machines and charge for the quality difference. That's not consolation. It's the map drawn by people who already crossed this bridge once.
What actually changed
"Be excellent and the market will find you" is still necessary. It stopped being enough. Excellence that goes unnoticed gets paid like mediocrity, because no one buys what they don't perceive. Your work now has two parts: make the piece, and make the judgment behind it visible. That second part used to be optional. For one more handful of trades, this week it stopped being so.
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