I decided to look into it from the tool aspect that i deem it to be at its core (a horribly abused one used by tools, but one nonetheless)... aand went into it with that frame of mind, as well as the "accessibility" argument oft used by their proponents, aand here's what i found:
it's anything but "easy" or accessible, and that's not even considering where the datasets originate from.
To even use shit like stable diffusion locally, you have to the trouble of installing a couple of programs beforehand, and then from a web UI you have the pleasure of putzing about with settings that you also then have to accumulate other bits and bobs to make work at least not horrifying.
of course you have to go through the entire strings of text prompt to even begin to formulate what you want, which for the most part, is nigh random anyway, hence why you get a lot of images in bulk i suppose.. there is a "seed" thing that gives you a reasonable closeness to what's there but that's moot in my standpoint.
It's also how weird some people hold all that close to their chest, that in itself i find decidedly weird - though kind of on point if you look at it from the point of view that they think themselves 'artists', and that it's similar behavior to the shittiest of artists that don't like to talk shop a lot of the time.
Either way the result is nigh entirely random, which is a given with all the digital mush that's extruded out of it.
Let's not forget the hardware aspect of this: you need at least a fairly decent gaming rig pull it off. The specs specifically call for an Nvidia card (because of course), buuut it 'parrently works on a AMD rig with a little fnagling (hello thar accessibility).
CPU and Ram need to be also up there too, btw. I think the irony here of actually being quite expensive to have a decent setup to do this shouldn't be lost on any of us here, considering how gatekeepery the proponents seem to think we artists are with our initial set up costs of roughly the cost of one big mac's worth of materials with change left over if we didn't find/borrow/filch this and that from elsewhere to begin with like so many of us did when we were younger..
So you've got all this, so what about the internet?
Apps and Web services, of course vary in terms of "you get what you pay for", also of course it's got that whole monetisation bent to a greater majority of it. Highly depends on whether you want a high-res option too, since you're at a website rather than going through the hassle of setting one up locally on your machine. Then of course you still have the aforementioned prompt hassle, etc.. and the aberrations inherent to the use of this tool (fingies!).
Now all this takes time to do, not as long as taking the time to actually learn to draw, mind. But as an artist, like any other artist out there..... actually drawing takes far less time and setup, aaaaand is infinitely less of a pain in the ass.
Now, as a reference tool, i can see its utility, need pose or setting inspo? groovy, great, it's more complicated than a google image search back in the day buuut if you wanna make things harder on yourself, go nuts i suppose if you don't mind the ethics issue of where the data comes from..
As an actual thing that makes art? There's only so many ways one can properly articulate the phrase: "get fucked" before just going with that, y'know?
This isn't even getting into the crux of the matter:
The average punter who thinks they can make a living off of this is delusional as well as a douche (or an utter fool at the very least), why? because there's so many of them, and with the datasets pretty much pulling from similar sources, it all begins to become homogenized too. They're all competing with each other, not us, we artists don't directly compete with each other here: anime rivalry at most, tbh.
This is, and always will be a corporate tool in order to save them from having to hire an artist, that's it... it was made by non creatives to serve the purpose of not having to deal with a creative.. By execs for execs i suppose.
And that's where the companies behind all of this shit will make the most money.
So in short?
As far as imagery goes: it's a useful tool, but honestly there's so much better ones out there that have previously existed and ever will, this like like the wooden artist's mannequin of digital referencing tools as far as i'm concerned.
it's not nearly as accessible as folks claim it is, and we have seen a myriad of artists with disabilities crank out some truly stunning shit with just sheer patience and determination.
If anything it's got a higher barrier of accessibility to it than just learning how to art.
The tldr version:
It's a tool at best, a shit thing at worst, and anybody who tells you otherwise is a liar and a fool.