OP here. This is phrased beautifully and at least partially reflects my own views. I especially like how you said "It doesn't feel like I "made" the things I did, but that I "found" them".

This is a big part in why I enjoy vastly different kinds of music creation. When I work with a traditional DAW and build a track from scratch, I'm sculpting and crafting an artwork. When I work with modular synthesizers and generative compositional tools (AI or not) I feel like I'm navigating sonic landscapes to find interesting destinations.

AI art is the latter, and while it's fun, it's a different feeling during creation all together. In music, I can typically hear which the artist was doing in a given song. With Stable Diffusion and DallE, I don't know that I can as reliably. This is why the divide is so interesting to me. We have to radically different avenues, each with their own merits in how fulfilling they can be, to choose from which produce similar results.

I will admit, there is something to the reward of making something hand crafted that at least to the artist, adds value, even if that value isn't (typically) transferable to the end user.