I don't think expensive public transport is the problem. It can be crucial for some people. The fact that the article says some people need "short stops on trips to and from work, short-distance trips and a higher frequency of trips" just means the public transport needs to be tweaked, not completely scrapped.
I think the divide is that artists have worked at developing a skill to express themselves (art) while AI artists think they have achieved the same thing by turning a prompt into an image. The former is an act of expression, the latter is choosing something you like out of a magazine. Very different and one is art and the other is not. If you really want to say AI is art, maybe, but the person prompting it is definitely not the artist...maybe the curator.