How long until graphic designers are obsolete?

I dunno. There is a site where people post porn images that were generated by A.I. I think they use a commercially available image generator.

I saw one picture of a girl with four legs and I don't think it was a kink, I think the machine makes that mistake around 1/2000 times or so. (I'm not so embarrassed that I saw the image but I am embarrassed by what that estimate entails.)

The system generates a lot of pictures of girls with two belly buttons, maybe that happens 5% of the time. From time to time it generates a badly mangled disembodied penis.

Someone might conclude this is a good reason to have an NSFW filter but I think that A.I.'s person should be paying a little more attention. They ought to be feeding these back via HFRL or something like that that punishes the system for making these sorts of mistakes.

It won't happen any time soon. Graphic design is more that putting together pretty images. I think it will evolve with AI but it won't go away. If all you want is pretty images or a pretty interface then you can search the internet and get those parts now. But if you want someone to put together and be responsible for a nice effective design then you need to hire someone. That will continue to be the case for designers but they will use different tools to accomplish the job. The danger is in not evolving and hoping you don't have to learn new tools. But that has been the case. A 1970s designer would have a hard time today. They might still be able to get a job but it will be hard. We'll see the same type of situation happening going forward.

AI can do good art but not perfect (subjectively) art which requires that human touch of listening to the client and understanding emotional impact desired.

I would guess graphic artists would have to be part prompt engineers who spend most their time talking to clients and correcting ML output. I mean, if you are barely surviving and doing deviantart stuff you're screwed but if I am paying tens of thousands for a project you're fine, even if you finish it all with one prompt, you get paid for the responsibility and result not for working tirelessly on it. Yes, anyone can write a prompt but can anyone edit graphics and perfect it or recognize flaws and do a manual touch up? Reputation is what gets top tier folks get paid not artistic excellence.

How is the 'painting profession' non-existent? There are a lot of people who paint today and make a living from it. There might not be any recognizable faces [to you]. And of course, there are still people who paint structures, inside and out.

Painting is not essentially non-existent. A sizable number of them are unionized and make a decent living wage nowadays: https://www.iupat.org/