"a creative expression is not needed for art" LOL
You fail to argue against that statement. Laughing and belittling is not arguing.
Look at a caricature painter on street. Is he expressing his feelings when doing a caricature of you in a few minutes? Or is he working and applying his skill? Is his painting art or is it not?
What do you think about the artistic work of a photographer? Is it art, when he waits for the perfect moment to take a picture of a sunset? Was it creative expression? What did he create exactly and how? He just took a picture! He only decided what picture to take. Or he made hundreds and thousands of pictures and selected a few. Sometimes he arranged things and selects influences like lighting. Or directs people how to pose for the camera. Yet people make art books from such photos, call it art and I do not know of any discussion that people do not consider it art.
What does an AI operator do? He arranges things, influences the composition of the image and selects the good ones. If what a photographer does is art, what an AI operator does is art too. On a technical level, what the AI does is not art, but that is like saying the camera does not do art. Of course not. They are things.
Oh, and I believe a photographer also has copyright for his creations, even if he does not own the sun and the landscape. That AI creations have apparantly no copyright is on thin ice, because there is still humans involved.