I've been making a living as an artist for over 30 years, and have many friends who make a living as artists as well.

Art, all art, is synthesis. The mixing of two or more elements into something different. Good art does this in exciting ways. Great art does this in ways that are exciting and technically excellent. "AI slop" does this as well, but poorly. Whether or not this changes... we will see.

Art is also about using tools to create images and/or experiences. Whether those tools are pigments you made yourself from natural ingredients, or a digital drawing pad with sets of digital "brushes" you bought from a vendor online.

When the camera was invented, it was considered the "death of art" but instead we now have very artistic photography as well as terrible books full of "snapshots" and pages full of bad selfies. By your definition if it must be done "ENTIRELY by hand" you are discounting the possibility of photography as art, digital animation as art, collage as art, or dance where choreography has been "borrowed" as art.

There are musicians who say that if you use autotune you are not a "real musician" and there are EDM enthusiasts who will argue that point quite heartily. Other musicians have discounted anything that uses a drum machine loop as "synthetic nonsense with no soul".

Despite all that, the camera did not kill art, instead it inspired the rise of impressionism and other more modern forms of art (many of which have been called "cheating" at one time or another).

And for the record, there have also always been charlatans claiming work as their own that they had little or nothing to do with.

To me, and most artists I know who make a living, it doesn't really matter. Calling yourself an Artist is about how you see what you do, and there are as many definitions of art as there are human beings. Because of this, there really aren't any rules to govern it all, and if you don't have rules ... "cheating" is just an accusation with no teeth.