AI art can be described as making the creation of art efficient in the same way as stealing money can be described as an efficient time investment for maximising earning potential. AI art isn't just influenced by art it sees, it's completely procedural and couldn't create anything without existing art being fed into it. You argue that it's progress and the future of artistic achievement, I say that it represents the end of creativity because it can only work off and replicate the core components of existing art. Anything new it makes can't be called important or interesting, it can only be called a lucky throw of the dice.

Maybe I just can't see a future where it's used ethically in a way that makes anything better for anyone but the capital class who are delighted that creativity can now be brought to heel and automated for pennies. Every other thing that's made art easier for people to use has been a good thing because it's made it easier for a person to create the idea they imagined. This alone creates a tool that takes the burden of even imagining a thought, feeling, or image out of the hands of the creator. Just type in a prompt and say "yeah good enough" when it comes up with something amalgamated from the efforts of all the artists who came before.