With my personal experiments with generative art, I think of the machine almost as a work assistant. I have a rough idea of what I'm going for, and the ways to attempt it, and I teach that to my computer using code. But then I go away from the computer and out into the world and drink coffee, sketch in my notebook, and in the meantime my computerized assistant is back home working on draft after draft of my latest piece of art.
I come home and I see what he's done, and most of it isn't great, but occasionally there is a gem! I look at what he did for that gem and then encourage him to do more of that, and then go back out into the world. I highly disagree that machine learning is the opposite of art.
If you go to any traditional artist's studio you will often find notebooks filled with discarded sketches and ideas. Paintings with color combinations or techniques that weren't ideal. This is almost exactly the same process. And I would argue that process is exactly what art is.