Oh man, this hits home. I used to run a small art booth at craft fairs and the SAME argument happened with photography back in the day, people said a camera does the work so it's not real art. Here's the thing though: the person who runs a prompt once and saves it and the one who runs it 40 times picking apart composition ARE doing different things, and that difference shows in the final image almost every time. My advice is stop arguing about the tool and look at the choices, because the guy who ran 14 passes picked that frame for a reason and that reason is the art. One tap is a slot machine, 14 taps is editing, and editing has always counted. The model is just the brush, the intent is the hand holding it.

Wow, never thought about how forced downtime might be the real productivity hack we keep ignoring.