"Because it’s not just pulling images from some database and playing mix and match with their pieces."

It's playing mix and match with not just their pieces, but their characteristics. If that wasn't what it was doing, the database would not be required.

"It’s very loosely similar to how if during the process of learning to draw I browsed other peoples works to learn how images of certain things are assembled and used that to gain skill and knowledge but when I make my own art I don’t directly use those images in the creation process."

But you aren't a machine carrying out instructions with no choice. You aren't just an output-producing biological algorithm. The most important input for creation is the initial idea that it is necessary. When you sit down to make a painting, yes, you are employing techniques you may have learned from others, but you may also invent your own techniques that haven't been used before. Most importantly, you are the instigator of your own creative process - you are not making that painting because you are compelled to by outside forces you cannot control, you are making that painting because it occurred to you and you thought it was a good idea.

No machine, absent human input, has ever produced a painting, for the simple reason that no machine ever does anything absent human input. Machines simply carry out instructions given to them by humans. They are very good at that.

It's simply a calculation engine, and humans have done the hard work of figuring out how to use calculations to synthesize works of art.

Let me know when an AI, unprompted and with no input, asks a question of a human being. At that point I will call it intelligence. Until then, it's just a very advanced program processing input to produce output.