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I think people generally do think photography is different to painting (less artful even). Obviously there's a lot of creative decision-making involved in a given photo, but not as much as for a given painting. Across a photographer's oeuvre, you start to see more and more evidence of intentionality, and it takes collections and curation to establish your bona fides as a photographer to a greater extent than as a painter. What I'm saying is that density of micro decisions is a relevant criteria for assigning credit. I'm not suggesting that an ai prompter deserves no credit. They do deserve some, they could earn a lot depending on the details of their project. It seems clear to me though that they are also typically drawing substantially on how other artists would decide (not just the result of their decisions) as embodied in the AI. The decision-making patterns and tendencies of previous artists are captured in the model in a way that's different from making a paintbrush or lens, which relies on a craftsperson's decisions but doesn't typically preserve their decision-making as a living force.
I'm not sure what "less artful" means, but certainly no one would claim that ai generated images aren't different from paintings, even when they explicitly use painting styles. Much like how photorealistic photographs are different from photorealistic paintings which are different from photorealistic collages which are different from photorealistic CGI renderings, in non-trivial ways. Same would go for any AI generated images.
Whether it's "as much," I'm not sure how it's possible to quantify the amount of creative decisionmaking in a way that can be meaningfully compared like that.
This phenomenon is quite evident to exist in people who use AI generated images from following anyone who has posted AI generated images for a long time as well. It applies just as well when you take the AI generated part out of it; even Twitter accounts that merely share pre-existing images of any provenance inevitably establish a pattern of intentionality in terms of the images they deem worthy to share, ie curate. I don't know if a curator is an "artist" who deserves "credit" for their "art," but certainly a curator is someone who makes creative decisions.
Again, this seems perfectly cromulent to me, but also, I really don't think "deserving credit" is a particularly meaningful thing. People subjectively credit various things for their works, like God or their family, or only their hard work and effort, or their 5th grade teacher, or the barista whose off-hand comment triggered something in their brains, etc. and I don't really have an opinion on that, other than that it doesn't seem worth having an opinion on. My point is just that "creative decisionmaking" isn't a line that cuts between AI generated images and paintings/sketches/etc. and this applies for any other analogous media.
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