Using AI in this capacity is... interesting. It's crazy how good the quality of the outcome is. For me, learning how to write descriptive prompts that get the specific response you want, was rather difficult. I tend to obsess over fine details, so this made things take up most of my time. I found out that I really like the idea of using AI art for projects like this. I do NOT believe it takes away from creativity. For example, I heavily edited every image in Photoshop before placing them in the game. This took a great deal of software knowledge, knowing what I was looking for, and most-of-all... patience!
My reasoning for using AI art ultimately came down to 2 thoughts. One was me wanting to try something new that, as you mentioned, is currently in hot debate. Just to see if I could make it work in this specific type of environment (game jams). The second thought was simply the uniqueness. So much talk about AI in game development lately, and I didn't see anyone talking about it in Discord discussions, so I thought I'd try my hand at it.
Other than it being extremely time-consuming - as well as somewhat limited if you use free versions of AI imagery, which I did - I found it to be VERY helpful and VERY high quality. Even though it was stressful trying to make my way through the clutter, I actually enjoyed the process and plan to keep using it where it fits.