The blowback against AI in "art" feels overblown to me because the usage of AI art perfectly correlate with the same usage pattern as salaried art did.

It's used when the generated art is not seen as "art" but more of a tool.

This obviously is an issue for artists which lose potential customers, but that's overstated because - as you pointed out earlier too - a lot of people never would've paid for the art creation anyway...