You know you're comparing the best example of photography with the worst example of using an AI, right?

A photographer may carefully study their craft and set up their shots. They can also be someone who puts no thought at all into taking an almost random photo. Same as someone can carefully tune the parameters of a model and refine their prompt until they get something which meets their exacting specifications, or they can be someone who grunts into a text box and clicks generate.

Playing around with Stable Diffusion running locally, comparing my output to the things held up as AI art removes any doubt in my mind as to whether the creators are artists. They are.