When I first started, I was up all night gacha-style re-rolling, and getting a stunning image would hype me up for half a day. Once that novelty wore off, I started thinking about what it could actually help me get done. Now, for me, AI is more like a stable productivity tool—I can deliver on time when I take a job, replicate styles, and respond to changes in requirements.
That wow factor is rare, but being controllable and mass-producible is where the real value lies. Hobbyists will get burned out by aesthetic fatigue, but people who integrate it into their workflow as a productivity tool find it gets smoother the more they use it.
So-called value might just be going from ‘wow, that’s amazing’ to ‘this thing can reliably handle the job.’