Sad to say, but he's right, you know. Every attempt to recreate AI memes with traditional methods just generated a lot of mediocre to bad slop.
Frankly, I never understood the impulse. I make art because AI *can't* recreate what's in my mind. Why on earth would I want to ape AI?
Remember when people tried to redraw AI memes like Ash Baby and Mr. Chedda to "avoid using AI" but no one could make anything that captured their specific energy quite right? Like there's obviously going to be AI stuff that's better in some dimensions than human made stuff...