> The difference is that the jury is still out if these things are truly generating something novel. Or are we just making it pick from the spaces in between an average of all the images on the internet.

Novel in what sense? Most creative endeavor is not completely novel -- it's usually a combination of pre-existing styles, taste, patterns, and other inputs.

> The latter would mean everything quickly looks and feels the same.

I think human preferences will be a good guard rail against this. The reward will be greatly reduced for creating mostly the same things, just like real artists in real life.

> I also believe some barrier to entry is needed for good art, people are inherently lazy and AI lets us get away with "just good enough" - see llm assisted coding as an example

That's a pretty deep philosophical question -- "good art" is also a hell of a rabbit hole to go down!

Guess we'll find out :)