I think, where the real conflict comes from, is that most traditional artists are passionate about their craft and need to be able to sell their commodity art. Most people are empathetic of that and therefore not a fan of other commodity art competing with these passionate artists.

Photography was also controversial when it first appeared, because it meant traditional artists could hardly sell portraits and realistic paintings anymore.
I think, it also took a while for people to learn of and believe that some people are actually genuinely passionate about photography, too.

And well, AI is now the new thing, but it's also kind of worse. Because it's not just certain kinds of paintings that are affected, they've literally been trained to replace all commodity art.
And they're stealing off of those traditional artists (someone snapping a photograph of the Mona Lisa and trying to sell it as art will also get heckled).
And it's going to be hard to convince people that typing words into a box is something to be passionate about.