What's happening now is what you describe - people generating a large amount of images to find something that kinda works and doing small edits to fix the most egregious of errors. There's no consistency of style or presentation because people generating AI-based art don't have any foundational skills as artists. These people are going to compromise on what's shown in the picture against what they want to make, because while they can remove a finger in the wrong position, they don't have the skill to, say, edit the pose of a character to be in the exact position they want them in.
What I see happening in the future is artists, who have actual skill in drawing, using AI to help with the basic, boring work and then drawing the stuff they want to draw with their own artistic style and putting it all together to create something that's obviously theirs. They mightn't want to spend too much time drawing curtains in a room fluttering in the breeze, but you bet they will put all their efforts in drawing the cute anime girl sitting in that room. The artist will have enough skill to be able to make corrections to the AI-generated aspects of the piece when it's needed, and draw what they need to when AI isn't going to be specific enough to meet their vision. And, overall, it's going to contain their art style and artistic preferences so it's recognizably their piece.
That's how I see the future of AI in art, anyway.
Question, what do you consider is "
basic, boring work" of art?
This is the same "inventing a problem that doesn't exist for genAI to solve" which plagues the entire genAI industry. "I see the future of AI in law to assist lawyers" "I see the future of AI to assist doctor in diagnosing" "I see the future of AI to assist engineers to design". "I dont know what this future is but it can definitely happen!!"
This is why genAI/LLMs, in my opinions, are just scams. They are dressed up as this super intelligent, all knowing , self conscious, magical humanoid robot, when genAI/LLMs at it core is just "take input a > draw response B". "
Some future uses humanity as they currently are can not fathom of" is the name of the game. And just like .com, crypto, NFT, big data, Sillicon Valley gonna move away from AI into the "next big thing" like they always does once they finished exploiting people.
The only thing I can think of that fits the "basic and boring" part of artwork is toning and screening for mangas.
mangaka just want to draw the action and characters, so this is why they usually hire assistants to do that part.
Actual AI (not genAI/LLMs crap) already tackled this issues, and this is why mangaka/artists made the switch from traditional to digital. You can see how fast they apply toning in here with 6 years old technologies and it will get only better with time without any need of genAI/LLMs. Artists made the
traditional > digital switch not because of "things that maybe or maybe not digital can do in the future" but based on
"things that digital can already offer"
None of this toning is doable for the current genAI as it exists. GenAI literally doesn't know how to "preserve picture and just add a little effect", they are programmed not to.
It is going to take even more time to generate these effects using prompts than just ... draw them. And no company is training their genAI to do exactly this, because it isn't a business that can scale.
And this specific toning problem only applies to manga, art drawn on black and white with the goal of quantity > quality. Rather than "normal" artwork artist do where they just draw "1 art", usually colored. Normal artist does not have this "basic and boring work" of toning.
Mangaka also tried pasting real life background / 3D rendered background into their manga way before as a way to save time, but it honestly just ... completely conflict with the actual arts since they are in a completely different style of art and reduce the quality instead.
The real use of genAI is what you have already been seen it doing and will be continuing to do. Churning out boring and generic artworks until the end of time.