I don't think there needs to be concern if we have consistent standards and practices regarding the ethic of citing medium and skills used.

The comparison I use is the difference between saying 'watercolor' and 'digital watercolor.' A well done digital watercolor painting is still art, but it doesn't utilize the same skill sets or tools, and is not constrained by the same limitations, so it's considered dishonest and unethical to represent a digital painting as an analog one; but the digital painting isn't less of an art piece for being digital.

AI gives people the ability to step into the role of producer/director rather than artist. The problem is that, at this time, we have a lot of people thinking it's okay to go the early 'Walt Disney' route - ie, taking FULL credit for being the prompter/director, but not acknowledging the talent and labor of the people making the actual art. Basically, the AI needs to be seen/treated as not just a tool, but a collaborator, and the ethical standard that should be applied is basic credit at minimum. For example, if you commissioned a human to do all the line work for a piece and then you colored it in, even if you did an AMAZING job with the colors, it'd be fucked up/selfish/narcissistic /etc to be like "here is my original art piece!" and say nothing about the person that made the line art for you.

TLDR; don't ban AI art from competitions - create a new category for 'AI assisted or created works,' normalize the view that it's dishonest and unethical to present AI assisted/derived works to be presented as the result of organic skill/talent/artistic eye.

Rather, it's the other way around because of how it works. That's part of many people's distaste for it - it's the homogenized chicken-nugget/sausage version of art. For those that have an eye for spotting the Midjourney textures/flaws (which are key to it - the creators have been very open about wanting their engine to have a specific, identifiable 'flavor'), no matter how impressive the result, if you lean on it too heavily for the bulk of any given piece it comes across just as lazy as using a series of filters in photoshop on someone else's photo or drawing.