First I thought “Oh jeez, what a wall of text” but now you gave me my own thoughts that I want to share.
I don’t think callling genAI output “not art” is a very defendable statement. I believe art is ultimately a type of activity, and one that is very hard to draw a strict line around. If I find a cool piece of driftwood and frame it, did I do art? That’s kind of what that artist did when he picked his album cover.
But I also share your sentiment about “AI artists” pretending to work in a medium of which they understand 0% of the nuance. I think it makes more sense to call those people hacks instead of “not artists”, because that’s what you call people who use shallow, formulaic methods to dabble in a medium of which they are wholly incompetent.
And finally, AI as toolset does of course uniquely pander to hacks.
If I find a cool piece of driftwood and frame it, did I do art?
Kinda? I “found” a defective injection molding part, where the color of previous batch seeped in in a pattern that looks like a flower. It’s really pretty. That there is no intention behind it makes it more interesting to me. It wasn’t trivial to put it on a wall. I had to use nails and iron wire and then balance it. I am fine with not calling it art. On a scale 1-10 it definitely is not more than 2.