I agree that we need to proceed with caution.
On some level, I really like AI art, and my use case for it is as a way to create custom tailored stock images to break up hand-written content. If you see some of my blogs, you will see what I mean. I'm not claiming the art as mine, and my post isn't about the art, the post is about my content, and the art is just a cartoony illustration of that content. I think it's pretty obvious, so I haven't added disclaimers, but I would be happy to start adding a disclaimer that the art was AI generated.
Where I get resistant is with creating any "real" looking images, or when AI art is credited as if its real. My main concern is us getting lazy and starting to fall for deepfakes, or AI enhanced real images (i.e. a real image, but was "photoshopped" via AI to make the person in the image look bad).
It's all amazing technology, but I agree, we need to slow down, and be extremely critical from here on out.
I loved AI images to start with for the exact reason you said. But I have to withdraw from it as the more I know and understand the more I think we have to take a stand and not participate.