I have zero desire to get into a semantic argument over this. That would be very boring and is a poor refuge for anyone trying to have an honest discussion.
It’s not a coincidence that nearly all the people today with actual artistic talent universally despise AI. Meanwhile it’s all the talentless tech bros who won’t shut up about how they’re now incredible “artists” that love AI.
I don’t see prompting an AI as creating art in the same way that commissioning a painting doesn’t make you an artist. In this example, it’s the AI model that is the artist creating the “art”, but since AI models aren’t sentient (yet) then what they create isn’t art anymore than a sunset is despite being aesthetically beautiful.
Your “it’s just a tool” argument is especially ridiculous when you consider that the “tool” can create the same “art” in its entirety without you. It would be like if I googled the Mona Lisa and copy pasted it into Paint and then called myself an artist because I used Google and Paint as my tools.
In the case of AI models anything you can think to prompt is already embedded in the model so it’s not like you’re even creating anything. It’s already there. If you have infinite monkeys on a keyboard prompting AI they can generate every single possible image an AI is able to generate. Where is the artistry again?