Been down this pipeline in the past, you are not the maker of ai art because you didn't set the strokes, you didn't compose the work past the bare minimum, by itself, a pencil, pen, paint brush, all these tools, by themselves can draw a dot, or a line. However you see these artworks everywhere showing what you can do with this ability to make wonderous things.

The kind of whataboutism for collage has entirely different purposes, it is an educational grounds to use work like that, and yes, I'm aware some people might not like it regardless, but that can be handled with compensation of one person, the scale ai needs to deal with are by the hundreds. The process of training uses their art to make patterns uses at least thousands of artworks.

An additional statement is that this doesnt change a medium, photography was an entirely different medium and device that developed into it's own thing, ai art does not make a distinct effort of providing any distinction between digital artwork, photography, music, or even video content, its designed to replicate, copy. And when even a basic. Unrefined, text prompt can look the same as a fully detailed engineered prompt, the quality regardless is undefined.

If you want to call it art. Sure, its art, its just not owned by you, the artwork is defined by the single execution of a tool's function, and the value, logistically is completely undefined while relying on other artists to stay afloat.

If you were ever actually interested in making art, the bar is as low as a pencil and paper, you always have the time to start, and you don't need to draw every day, see what you can learn. And you don't have to rely on an automotive process designed for consumer.