I’ll expound on what i said in the other thread. AI as an artist’s tool could be a very versatile and compelling means of expression. The same rules that artists in other media have for depicting someone else’s work apply here. More importantly, it’s the effort one puts into using the AI tool - providing the prompts, explaining how those prompts created the image, and explicitly acknowledging (and paying for) the art used by the AI - that justifies the result being considered art.
The problem so far is that AI is being used not for legitimate artistic endeavors but as a novelty. Trump as a clown or Sonic as … pregnant? … certainly owe their origins to legitimate fan art and, even then, they don’t express unusual or unique perspectives. The AI art I’ve seen can at best be described as almost exclusively aesthetic reinterpretations of existing work. That kind of exploration is mostly harmless if it’s traditional canvas and paint (or original graphic design), but it’s highly problematic when using other original work.