it seems like the excuse people fall back on when talking about AI art is like "but what ELSE am i supposed to do?" and i'm like, look, i used to make album covers for my mixtapes (i was like 14 and downloading anime songs off the internet) out of megaman sprite art. get fucking creative
relevant especially right now: the library of congress has a gallery of free to use and reuse images, they release more every year. get like krita or something and fuck around with jpgs until you make something you like
I promise you, even doing that is 1000 times more interesting than AI art: