Taking still photos of anything is widely considered a creative activity. There's usually only a small amount of creativity involved. Sometimes more. Same goes for AI generated anything. You can have low effort photos and high effort photos, low effort AI generated pictures and high-effort AI generated pictures.

AI just lets you get a better result for less effort (for some definitions of "better"), just as a camera lets you get a better result for less effort than a paintbrush and canvas does.