So I discovered that the most effective way to utilize AI image generation is to literally draw a rough sketch of what you want by hand and then feed it to the LLM of your choice to have it redone in a different style and/or add whatever edits you want.
I've been using it a lot for concept art for my games and it looks like professional concept art for an actual game. It's really cool to see the characters that I have always dreamed and only made bad sketches of come to life like this.
No. I won't show you any of it because I plan on using it one day.
And no, I don't consider it "AI-slop" because it was partially done by a human (me).