The big difference is that back then, anyone with a consumer-level computer in their bedroom could turn it into a server and be a first-class citizen on the Internet.
With generative AI, models will be controlled by a handful of giant corporations who have the enormous corpuses (of dubious provenance) and compute ability to train them.
You can run ComfyUI and AnimateDiff on your PC. If you haven't checked them out, please do.
And there are other angles to consider. Apple, for one, is expressly interested in not becoming a thin client to cloud AI. They're baking a lot of inference power into their chips. If the creative class don't need their devices, that doesn't bode well for them...
FakeYou, CivitAi, WeightsGg, Comflowy, ... -- there are tons of vibrant communities to teach you everything you need to know. The tools are open source, free to use, and accessible.
With generative AI, models will be controlled by a handful of giant corporations who have the enormous corpuses (of dubious provenance) and compute ability to train them.
So it will be like last time, but even worse.