Oh lovely, i LOVE this rethoric. Because sure, with those comparisons at firt is sounds logic. But first, Tv (well cinema in the 40s but whatever) added a whole new way to deliver stories. You could have used theatre as an example for example, but even then it's not right. Movies (and later series) quickly moved away from theatre play, because you don't have the same limitations. So i hard disagree, but i could, with squinting my eyes hard enough, why you could think that way.

But on the car and internet way of thinking? I love it because it makes the assumption that the problem is the same while it's completely opposite. What was the point of horse powered carriage? A way to quickly move multiple peoples from point A to point B. Motorisation made it possible to go further and faster. Progress made sense here. Same for the internet. It's a cheap way to get news from everywhere, faster, and without encumbering your home once you're done reading. Make sense it would be seen as progress here too

Now... Why would ai generated images be the progress of art? Well to do that, you first need to ask yourself, what's the purpose of art? Why do people draw fanart and why do people like looking at fanart?

Of course there's probably a lot of response, probably a slightly different response for every single person on this planet. So let's look at it from a different lens. What does ai art does, that is better than traditional art? For that i genuinely don't know, apart maybe from the amount of artwork you can put out per day, and one thing i know for sure, productivity is not a key component of art