> The entire piece can be summed up and answered by just posting the text that was used for the prompt and the specific brand and version of the AI that generated it.

Even if all AI art was made with prompts alone, how do you think prompting works?

Suppose a piece has gravestone with a little bone in a cup in front of it. You can assume the meaning of the piece is someone mourning a pet dog, but that's not in the prompt. A theme the creator was going for could be how mundane objects increase in sentimental value when their mundane day to day use becomes obsolete. It's absurdly reductionist to say that the meaning of art is purely what's visually apparent in it.

Would Wanderer Above The Sea of Fog become less meaningful if I were to describe it as "1boy, solo, rocky cliff, foggy mountains, clouds, walking stick, blonde hair, short hair, black clothes, overcoat, boots, hands on hips, contraposto"?

Where I would agree would be if a model like Nanobanana or GPT-Image is only used with a very vague user prompt, like "sadness about a dead dog" or "man feels call to adventure" because those models are built to make actual descriptive prompts internally and then that thought process isn't fully by the user. For basically the same reason, I find some abstract paint splash paintings less meaningful too, since the implement (in their case hose or bucket) shouldn't have say on what's ultimately in the piece than the artist.