> image generation models is offloaded to the human visual cortex which is a very old evolutionary construct and thus had time to become very resilient

This is a very important point. A group of my colleagues (who are not tech people) are much more impressed with the image generation models than with the chat interface, even though the images are often whacky or just wrong. Yet the fact that it tried is impressive to them, with their minds managing to fill in the blanks.

I wonder how this compares to how a toddler speaks vs. paints/draws, which is typically better in the former than the latter. I'm both cases, we fill in the blanks in our minds.