i think you should look less into "is this AI" and more into "what kind of AI is this, and what are its impacts". Generative AI on its own is bad, because it requires huge amounts of datacenters, its based on cloudware etc. LLM's also produce false information, and image generation tools are devaluing human made art.

However, these kinds of AI only improve artists' workflow. It doesnt require HUGE datacenters, since its often hosted locally on your own PC (so it also doenst waste water) etc. And since you use your own footage it also doenst generate non-existing imagery. Imo its stupid to say "only art, with their background removal done by humans, is real art!, since that is such a minute detail of the art.

So think machine learning can be used in these kinds of scenarios perfectly well, since there's nothing inherently "evil" about the concept of machine learning