Nice to see you getting into ai art!
kaliyuga has given quite a comprehensive answer. I would like to say why I started using ai generated art. I always liked to look at great paintings and pictures and wonder what must have been going through the minds of the artists. I am a great fan of your art too:).
Sometimes, I used to want to produce such art too. That's where ai art came in. I could suddenly 'make' art from words. It was only limited by my imagination. I was able to not just look at art but also produce art now. Initially, I used these 'generated' images to help tell short stories that I used to write here on Hive. Then, the tools got so advanced that generating these images itself seemed art. Like Kaliyuga said, 'prompt engineering' itself seems like a skill that has a steep learning curve. So, this is where the creativity part comes in in 'ai art'.
So is ai art 'art'? I am not sure. It could well be the next evolution of art...

ps : ai art generation is very addictive, beware!;)