Oh the Ai art generator has no "soul" and it's soy and reddit? This precious art form (illustrating things that other people pay you to, a medium dominated almost entirely by furries, porn, and furry porn) is being destroyed by the evil AI? I'm sorry that the democratization of art creation is so upsetting to you. I've brought dozens of ideas to life by typing words into a prompt and I didn't have to pay someone $300 to do so.
Then yeah, that's the problem. But you're talking about the difference between a 1000 employee company replacing their artists with AI and some geek with a computer who wants to generate neat images for their project. AI generators are just a tool, also subject to an individual choice. Our problem is with the end, not the means.
The means are not free from controversy. Many artists did not consent and were not asked whether they wanted their images used for such a project. If the AI were created solely from images the operator owned the rights to or made themselves, or from artists who wanted to contribute to the AI, I would understand your point, but as it is now AI is rooted in systemic theft. It's not that piracy is universally good or even universally neutral, it's more that companies have pushed their luck trying to "prevent piracy" and "protect intellectual property" so hard that it basically fucks everyone else over and piracy has emerged as a kind of push-back. I'm personally not much of a piracy defender, I basically don't pirate any games that aren't console exclusive and from at least 2 generations before the current one, and on PC I buy anything that's still up for sale (I mostly buy indie stuff).