I see it this way to be honest:
- companies will aggresively try to use AI in the next 2-3 years, downsizing themselves in the meantime
- the 3-5 year launch mark will show that downsizing was an awful idea and took too many hits to really be worth it. I don't know if those hits will be in profits (depends on the company) but it will clearly hit that uncanny valley.
- 6-8 year mark will have studios hiring like crazy to get the talent they bled back. They won't be as big as before, but it will grow to a more sane level of operation.
- 10-12 year mark will have the "Apple" of AI finally nail the happy medium between efficiency and profitability (hopefully without devastating the workers, but who knows?). Competitors will follow throw and properly usher the promises AI is making right now.
- 15 year mark is when AI has proper pipelining, training, college courses, legal lines, etc. established and becomes standard faire, no stranger than using an IDE.
As I see it, companies and AI tech alike are trying to pretend to be the 10 year mark all the while we're currently in legal talks and figuring out what and where to use AI to begin with. In my biased opinion, I hope there's enough red tape on generative art to make it not worth it for large studios to leverage it easily (e.g. generative art loses all copyright/trademarkability, even if using owned IPs. Likely not that extreme, but close).