a point to on to this, speaking as somebody whose mother and grandfather both were artist who worked on commission: the sort of people who thinks that prompt based AI art generation is a way to avoid paying artists are not exactly the sort of people who are just about to go pay artists already. These were not your customers the sort of people or companies that are willing to commission artists. These people already largely moved away from doing so years ago because there an already been alternative ways of doing that that are cheaper.
what this kind of popular understanding of AI art feels like its replacing is the (already pretty shit quality) 1k-10k art market, oriented towards the sorts of upwardly mobile doofuses who like the idea of Having Art In Their House more than they actually like art. A good example of this is the stuff sold at the art basel miami-adjacent fair Red Dot for ages now, which generally falls into this price range and is largely derivative of the sorts of artists that people who don't know art think are still cutting edge (like warhol). This following piece is listed at 850 dollars. Here's a pretty bad painting of the brooklyn bridge that looks like, generously, student work. 2500! finally, here's a derivative-looking painting of boats for nearly 3000. to me, it looks very...courtyard by Marriott. it looks pretty unconnected to anything going on in art for the last, i dunno, 100+ years, except other commercial dreck like this
This stuff feels way more like what the AI art marketers are targeting. These are not the people who would have commissioned you. These are people who only know like 5 artists total and if the painting in question doesn't directly reference them or just Look Vaguely Pleasant, they want nothing to do with it. However, if it looks like something from a hotel lobby or What They Think Banksy Is™, they will happily pay 4 figures