There are ways to use generative AI as a tool in creating art. There was an image which won a photography contest which invited digitally manipulated images, but not expressly AI images. I've read descriptions of the iterative way the artist used AI to create the result he envisioned - and it went well beyond requesting an Ansel Adams - like image. (He disclosed the use of AI, and ultimately declined the award because he entered the contest to prove a point.) I've seen another AI artist who wrote her own AI software, trained it on her own existing body of work, then "collaborated" with the AI to create new art.
I am excited, especially, by the possibility that artists with physical disabilities could use AI to turn what is trapped in their mind into something that they can share with the world.
But, for now, it is impossible to leave the theft aside because most of the existing AI was trained using stolen images - and there is no way to verify which (if any) might not have been. So until AI exists that was verifiably trained with integrity (using solely public domain or works licensed without coercion), it will have to remain an enticing possibility (aside from any course-based requirement that I use it).
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