Communism

Generative AI is something inherently different. It's a bias multiplication machine. Have you ever visited CivitAI?

Yes, the application is similar. GUIs like ComfyUI are sophisticated and grant a good deal of control and creative freedom, much like Photoshop, DAWs or Blender.

All these technologies you mentioned have one thing in common they do not have in common with generative AI though: you could use them to model after the real world. Photorealism (as in: an exact representation of something existing in the non-digital realm) is achievable with all of those. It is not possible to achieve it with generative AI. AI only has its own "space" where it snatches ideas from. Gen AI can never be a gateway to art by itself, but its also way too powerful to just be a new tool.

Also I don't get how open source gen AI will lead to the proletarianization of art. What people need to create art is education, pen and paper, health, and free time. Making those accessible to everyone is much easier than to make sure everybody who wants to do "art" gets their 1000$ GPU and tons of RAM.