You’re comparing apples and oranges a bit here. Sure, using a robot to lift weights at the gym is analogous to using AI to create art, if your goal is to get better at being an artist.
But if you’re a person with no painting or drawing skills who uses AI as a way to express your ideas visually, it would be a little more akin to being a shitty machinist who uses Sketchup and a 3D printer to manifest their mechanical ideas in meatspace.
99% of AI “art” is absolutely a cringey slopfest, but I’m not going to lie and pretend I can’t relate at all to people who use it as a tool to supplement their own practical deficiencies. Whether art should be more about the output or the process is a whole other philosophical debate…
You’re not wrong. But the exact same point could be made about mapping the workflow of 3D printing a custom part to having a machinist prototype it for you.
In both cases, you tell the machine what you want, and it executes it more or less faithfully depending on how well you describe the thing. There is a direct parallel to the 3D printed “art” and copy/paste gizmos slopping up marketplaces–but we rightfully don’t claim that the affordability and accessibility of 3D printers is a problem.