I'll repeat what I wrote in another comment: the problem might just be that usually the "AI artist" isn't the one that built and trained the model. What the art

I'll repeat what I wrote in another comment: the problem might just be that usually the "AI artist" isn't the one that built and trained the model. What the artist does in this case is spending some time in finding a good prompt. Which could be seen as a form of art itself, but if we're talking about time spent, this amounts to much less. Edit: I decided to add my two cents about using time spent as a measure of effort. I think this can be misleading and I have a counterexample, although admittedly it isn't from art: think about an athlete running 100 meters. This doesn't require effort just in the training before, but also in the act itself. And the less time the athele takes to run 100 meters, the more is the effort required. As for my own opinion about art, I think that anything could be art: what counts is the idea behind it. How this translates to this specific problem of AI generated images I'm unsure though, as it would, at least in part, depend on how much of your idea you can convey through a ML model.