Image removal and AI tools have an overlap, for sure. RemBG is pretty effective, which runs in many of the environments with Stable Diffusion. Bria is a recent improved model for RemBG, which I've had some good success with. It's not perfect, but it cuts out a lot of the work.
Krita is A+.
Crazy Train?
I feel like the pandemic showed the cracks in the status quo, and ever since things have gone back to "normal," employers are trying to nudge things back to the pre-pandemic status quo. People have seen other possibilities through those cracks, and business has no idea how to deal with it.
I love those x360s. I have a G5 and it's surprisingly capable of handling somewhat intense tasks.
Playing in person, I made a lot of papercraft maps and items to get a very 3D feeling on the cheap. It was a lot of work, but my players loved it.
My current game is fully remote, and I'm finding I like creating digital stuff for Foundry even more than I liked papercraft. For non-combat stuff I set up splash screens with a piece of art showing the location, and then pop-up insert images with portraits of NPCs they meet. When it comes to combat, there are lots of really quality battlemap creators out there, with a lot of free options.
I don't know how anyone lives without it.
Fully upgraded position ejector shreds.
I reinstall and okay through it again every several years. Lately No Man's Sky has been scratching some of that itch for me, though.
You can play entirely solo if you want, and even turn off networking if you don't want to see other people at all. Mostly you just see other players running around doing their own thing. There's no competitive or mandatory co-op things that I've seen.