I don't need to tell an AI to scout the location, travel there, wait for optimal lighting, nail the composition, dial in the settings, etc. I don't need to tell a sculptor to do that either - it's a completely different artistic field. Nobody here is claiming AI-generated pictures are photography - they're not. Photography is done with a camera. The discussion is whether generating pictures with AI counts as art or not - not whether it's photography.

I'm using photography as the example because people dismiss AI art on the grounds that "it doesn't require any skill or effort," but the exact same argument has been thrown at photography forever. There was a time when purists said the same thing about digital photography, and they were equally saying it about film photography back when it was new and painting was still "the" way to make pictures.