Nice article! :)
I like to think of the following example:
There is a magical room. This room is full with an infinite number of images - every possible image that can exist - every combination of pixels - is in this room. A person while in this room has an infinite amount of time and an infinite amount of patience. You enter that room with the intention of finding an image that conveys a particular emotion or feeling. You walk through, looking image by image, trying to find one which you believe conveys that emotion. Finally, you find the perfect image. You take it out of the room so that now you can share it with others.
Did you make art?
Not everyone would answer that question the same way. For someone, the act of a meaningful selection is artistic in itself - in a way similar to pointing the camera somewhere and clicking a button as long as there is an intention to do so. But someone else might say "no, you simply picked up an image that already existed, so it is not art". There is no objective set of parameters to define art, so there are lots of different subjective opinions.
Also related. My family makes jewelry. I have helped them make some AI-inspired designs and posted them on social media. Some people got especially upset and left us nasty comments in which they stated that AI does not make real art, that this was intellectual theft, etc. We never made any artistic claim or called it art - they are jewelry designs that look cool.
AI can be extremely helpful during the first steps of the design process. Usually a client describes their vision, an artist draws it, the client asks for corrections, artist draws version 2, client changes their mind, version 3...... AI-aided design can facilitate this process dramatically by quickly iterating through options live to eventually generate a much better initial input for the artist!
I see more people criticizing AI art for not being art than I see people who use AI tools claiming that it is!