How many hours of hard work do you need to put in before you can have the "benefit" of calling yourself an artist?

Tbh this sounds like gatekeeping to me.

That's trying to put words in my mouth. We were talking about creative expression being taken away by AI, and I argued that artists can still retain creative expression, and that these AI tools make it possible for more people to express themselves creatively. I never said that artists should have no reason to feel unhappy about that. That's criticising a position I didn't argue.