An artist who's never seen art is like an AI with no training data

We probably have different definitions for what constitutes an artist. In my experience most artists spend time looking at the world around them rather than looking at other artists' work.

All art is derivative. Even "outsider art", which is made by artists who are ostensibly naive to the work of other artists. (Personally I think that category is bullshit gatekeeping, but that's another discussion entirely.)

not my college of arts experience.

And based on what I've seen in the article, the AI images look to be notionally better than the original examples.