Setting aside the usual arguments on the anti- and pro-AI art debate and the nature of creativity itself, perhaps the negative reaction that the Redditor encountered is part of a sea change in opinion among many people that think corporate AI platforms are exploitive and extractive in nature because their datasets rely on copyrighted material without the original artists’ permission. And that’s without getting into AI’s negative drag on the environment.
The field of AI would never develop if everything they made along the way had to be thrown away as “not real AI”.
At one point, getting computers to understand the rules of chess at all was part of the AI field. So was Conway’s Game of Life, which uses a few simple rules to simulate cellular organisms and create some fascinating patterns. Optimizing compilers and virtual machines also came out of AI research.
The “not real AI” meme has no basis in the history of the field.