Not all games needs a pixel art spritesheet with walk cycle animation. Some games like VN, rogue-lites, deck builders, management simulation, city builders, etc., might only need some static images.

And you may also use static images + bone animation to make some ... animations. I've yet to see much of what control net can do, but if it can you make a character in a certain pose, then do that 3/12/24 times and you have a walk animation!

• AI will cause rates that artists are paid to plummet.
• "To get a good result out of AI the client will need to clearly specify what he wants. Designers, we are safe."
• AI (currently) sucks at producing game-ready assets aside from concept art.
• AI is just a next gen tool FOR artists.

These four suppositions can all be true at the same time and, IMHO, seem to suggest a good outcome for us ahead.

laypeople like myself may be able to use AI to create artwork that would otherwise be beyond their reach without hiring artists. However, at least for me, the content I can prompt is still only the kind of stuff I wouldn't have hired an artist for anyway.

Commissioned artists already have an edge with the skills it takes to understand what the client really wants (which is a crossover skill with AI prompting), and they have the skills to manually alter an AI image to get it juuuust right.

Aritst: How about this? <AI generated concept scene>
Client: No. More blood. Less cotton candy.
Artist: Oh, so it's a *creepy* tickle monster, not a *cutesy* tickle monster. So like this? <New AI generated concept scene featuring elongated-fingers-with-too-many-joints instead of feathers>
Client: yeah! but... now make it move like in video games where it can play on repeat and still look good.
Artist: Make a spritesheet of it with stable animation loops and walk cycles? 
Client: Yeah, that.

Artist can save a bunch of time by leveraging AI to communicate the client's desires without hours of wasted concept sketches. The artist still has to chisel off the rough edges and make it work right. Commission rates may drop, but not necessarily because artists are being paid less per hour. They'll just have to work less hours to get the same tasks done.

i have spent numerous hours playing with multiple different ai art algorithms, researched and tested prompt engineering, and i have never generated anything that was useful to me out of the box with no editing needed on my part.

Personally, I feel like AI art has gotten a certain stigma. People seem reluctant to use it in actual products, either because it's in legal limbo, or it's not good quality, or it represents a future in which almost everyone is out of work.

Granted, this could change, but as long as that stigma is around, I think there will be a demand for human artists.