That still requires gathering the dirty items together, loading/unloading, keeping track of when it is full/time to run.

And I still need to prompt the AI, review the images presented, copy/paste them, possibly apply further manipulations to suit my needs.

Like, yes. Your life isn't going to be 100% on autopilot for anything except bill pay.

that doesn’t take away from the message of “AI should help make life easier, not replace the creative outlets additional free time should allow”

I think it outlines the raw limits of any kind of automation. You can make imperfect trades between human labor and appliances. But there's always a limit that a tool can do without supervision relative to what a cognizant human can perform.