General Discussion

First, the AI user did create the sketches - just with words, rather than pen and paper.

Second - have you heard of aphantasia? Most people, including artists have a "mind's eye," which allows them to visualize things. Close your eyes and try to picture an apple. If you can see the apple, you have the main neurological variant of a mind's eye. Some of us, including a fair number of artists, see absolutely no images. So when I am in the ideation phase of creating art, words are a lot closer to what I "see" than images - so sketching those original thoughts with a tool that can turn words into images is similar to the process of sketching with pen and paper for people without aphantasia.

It is still not an efficient process for me - because what I "see" is still closer in form and function to vectors than to words. So most of my ideation goes undocumented, or documented by only a few words.

But AI can be a useful tool equivalent to quickly cranking out sketches for those who see pictures in their minds.

Third - you don't think writing is a creative process? Putting your vision down in words (as you do to create a prompt) certainly, in my book, qualifies as creative.

Fourth identifying which image matches your vision and evaluating it for quality requires an artists' mind. Identifying and editing the portions of the image which don't match your vision requires creativity. This is a different creative process - but creating photography requires a different creative process than painting, than sculpting. No one creative process is inherently better than another.

Finally - the arguments you are making are extremely reminiscent of the arguments used to dismiss photography as not real art.