'People say it's a tool, but they use it for the thing it does!' ... what?
How else could you use generative AI, except to generate a thing for you?
Most things that could be commissioned - aren't. The money is never spent. The money isn't real. No one is robbed when a robot does the thing instead, because what it's instead of, is the thing not happening.
You cannot kvetch about this replacing all artists forever and still insist it's a flash in the pan. The tech works. You can run it on your own computer, to-day. It plainly serves a desirable purpose. That alone makes comparisons to NFTs as spurious as those dolts insisting 'people doubted the internet.'
Any visions of this blowing over should've vanished when it became a porn faucet.