That sort of misses the point, which is common when people consider generative art.

Not only does the artist code the artwork into what they consider to be the finished piece, they then curate the output of that system to pick out items that are of particular appeal.

That seems to be a weird perspective when we know that artworks that are collaboratively made by humans exist among humans. Think of films, for example, where at the extreme ends you might look at hundreds or thousands of people collaborating on them.

Sure, many people may think that the director is the central figure, (often foolishly) even going so far as to almost completely discounting the impact others have, however I don’t think many people would be willing to completely discount the DoP, editor, screenwriter, etc. as artists in their own right, with their own contributions to the finished artwork.

As such your argument seems suspicious and weird. Sure, actual people were also involved in the creation of this hypothetical computer generated final artwork in different roles but can you be so quick to dismiss the contribution of the software?

I don’t think this is as easy to discount as you make it sound.

The software doesn’t contribute anything it wasn’t programmed to contribute, is my point.

Neither is the brush.

Correct, but no one tries to claim that the brush made an art work.