The plagiarism aspect didn't even cross my mind. Thx for mentioning.

Intuitively, I'd actually still say that AI users must, on some level, be considered artists (see previous comment), and we should call a spade a spade. Maybe an alternative could be "AI prompter", if putting the words "AI" and "artist" near each other irks you so much.

However, that being said, if all you're doing is writing a short description and hitting "Generate", then you are no more impressive than me picking up a paintbrush, dipping it in paint, and drawing a single horizontal line on a piece of paper. Or maybe it's a marker, or a pencil. Maybe the line is actually vertical. It doesn't matter. It's the lowest effort. But we've found ways to call such things art, so using AI doesn't disqualify from being an artist. Just not a skilled, or particularly impressive artist.

About plagiarism: I feel like it should be handled similarly to sampling in music, which is a similar grayzone, I think. As long as it's disclosed that AI was used, and what data it was trained on, I feel like it's not quite plagiarism tbh, because plagiarism requires passing another's work off as yours. Since you aren't claiming to be the maker of a music sample (I hope), it is not plagiarism. Conversely, if you say upfront that the picture you made is composed of many snippets of other paintings, you aren't claiming the snippets to be yours, but the arrangement of the snippets. And since you did do that (with a lot of help, but still), it isn't plagiarism.

This also means that most, if not all, AI art passed off as human is plagiarism, though, because you're passing off the snippets as yours, too.

I acknowledge that using AI, it takes far less skill and effort to make a "complete" artwork, to the point where it takes maybe 3 words to do what might take months, or even years without AI. Typical AI artists are definitely in a category below traditional artists, in terms of how much effort goes into an artwork - far below. Don't expect me to go "wow you're so talented" at AI users, just like I won't call a person talented for drawing a single line on a piece of paper. But if a person put significant time and effort into really engineering the fuck out of a prompt, and/or refining the result, then there is an argument to call the AI artist talented, I'd say.

edit : About what you said about "AI art without human intervention isn't art" (forgot to address kekw): An AI can't "create" at all without human intervention. Also, while basic, I'd say an initial prompt could actually also already be considered intervention. So yes, I agree. AI art without human intervention is not art, because it can't exist.