That's a great point! I wonder if the difference might be that, as you mentioned, Hirst's lack of direct involvement was part of his artistic message. I wonder "work where the medium is part of the message" might just be an exception to the rule? Although in general I am suspicious of whether AI art is really art, I would consider it art if using AI was part of the message. However, does that generalize to other messages that people use art to communicate?

Have you ever seen the end credits of a movie. It’s not made by one person either. Just like cathedrals aren’t built by one person.

But someone has the vision and make it real. That which is real is a medium from one soul (or many) to you.

I still have to see someone using LLM to share a soulful vision of his.