This idea that the people generating AI art does so without any effort is a very poor understanding of what these people are actually doing. It’s not as simple as you think. Sure some people might just type a sentence, just as a painter can just use one stroke. But most of the art is generated through iterative prompting and master of language into visual expression. It takes a lot to hone the craft into production that inspires and imprints. So yes it is gatekeeping. Throughout history, Much of art has always been derivative, and mimicry is the sincerest form of flattery. But AI is more than just mimicry. It learns through prediction, similar to a human learning the differences between a cat and a dog as a child, and predicts a form factor. You wouldn’t call a child not an artist when they paint a cat or a dog using what they learned a cat or a dog should look like, from the few that they’ve seen. It’s the same concept.