When people refer to AI as a tool, they mean as a part of the drawing/rendering workflow, not the whole. If you went through the entire design workflow without the AI, you can take full ownership over that. That part still takes your skill. But if the AI still builds most if not all of the image, you can't really claim ownership over the image, since from that point, the AI makes (basically) all of the skillful decisions.

Only if you start being a part of actively shaping the drawing, like providing a sufficiently original base image or other advanced original input, drawing over or recomposing the image afterwards, you can get something you were actually a part of it. That's the (closer) equivalent of an artists brush. The artist uses and applies the brush in a way to make something that becomes bigger than it's parts. Using AI for the full image would be equivalent to applying a stamp. It can be a very pretty stamp, but something else made it.

Saying "I made this", isn't false per se, but the omission of "by having the AI draw my design." does drastically change the perception to the point it's a deceptive. It's just about being honest. If you made a cool design, stick to taking credit for the design. At the end of the day, not being a part of putting the design into a drawing is not uncommon, but certainly better than being deceptive, even if some people may dislike the AI use. Those people will hate you all the more for lying by omission over it if that was an issue for them, and it can certainly also draw unhappy responses from others who would be fine if you told them honestly.

Are you saying it's crap even though the writer put skill into the unique description, but used a tool to make a picture based on it?

Yes, they are entirely different domains. Thats like saying if someone painted a very beautiful picture, with effort and detail. Then claimed authorship over stories written about the subject.

Inspiration is a real thing, and should be lauded, but it still takes skill and an eye for art to render a scene. When someone gets a tattoo, do they usually claim they were the artist, should I? I have an extremely detailed idea for one I’d like to get, colors picked out, subject, poses, etc. but I am not skilled enough to render it, nor put it on my body. I’ve got a great design, but no art.

No I think it's more like hiring someone to do the work (as in the comic). Beyond using Autotune or making a collage, turning something into something else.

If you are just asking CAN the AI be used as a tool for art, maybe? If I ask it to show me something then use that "something" to make a different work, I don't think that's different from finding that inspo elsewhere. Like if I theoretically asked an AI "what else can I do with all this basil" and it gave me a list and I made a version of one of those ideas, I would still think I was the chef.

Digital freehand art takes a lot of practice, one of my kids does both offline (watercolors, pens, acrylic paint) and digital drawing and they are equally challenging.

A way better execution of your example would be people making design documents and the people building it.

Its a symbiosis, without one the other can't work. Let's say I sit down and make a full concept and prototype construction plan for a small tank model. That makes me a (hopefully) good CAD designer. If I than put this into a hypothetical fully automatic CNC machine, I can't say I'm a good machinist. Replace Cad design with prompting and the fully automatic CNC machine with AI.

Shit goes in, shit comes out.

Oh yeah and also the fully auto CNC machine just has a bunch of Cad Files from people who have never consented to it being used and reused to assemble the cad file mostly relating to the prompt.

yes, why wouldn't it be crap? putting effort into the input to feed a probabilistic machine doesn't suddenly make the output appealing somehow. there is a difference of skill and resulting quality between an artist using a brush and a person using a slop generator. the notion that your slop generator is generating slop because you're simply prompting it wrong is nonsense.

and quite frankly, whoever thinks that an image generator built on mass scraping others' creative works pushed forward by the worst of big tech and a paintbrush are equivalent in ethics and quality because they say they're both "tools" might just be a tool as well.