If you iterate, you are not in control of what changes. You only find out what has changed after the result has been generated.

If you think that's the case then you don't understand the medium. Once you've explored a model, seen into its mind, understand how it understands things, you can direct it quite precisely. At least as precisely as a photographer taking a picture of a tree -- yes, if you care about the arrangement of leaves then it might take a couple of tries until the wind moves them just right but you've made a point of going to the right tree, in the right season, on a day with the right weather, at a time with the right light.

Whereas today, generative AI is not being made as a critique to anything.

I'm not claiming that. There's an incidental artistry in the sense that now some progressives have their underwear in a twist just as conservatives had theirs in a twist about Fountain but I'll readily grant that there was no human intent behind it. Sometimes it's not artists who troll people but the general machinations of the world. Still worthy of appreciation but calling it "art" is not a hill I would die on.

What I'm claiming is that you can't judge art by the level of craft involved: It can be zero and still be art. Any argument involving craft is literally missing the point of what art is.