Art is quite subjective. So hard to say what is "garbage" and what isn't. I assume this comment will get downvoted due to that. That being said I do agree with you :). After staring an GAN art for a year I find it is extremely "empty" and essentially all looks the same, with very similar visual artifacts that make them look bad. I view style transfer and GAN art generally as "trippy artistic filters". I don't think it's more than that at the current state of the art. Even in images linked above me: they are cool, but do just seem to be trippy distortions of existing things. If you like that that's fine, but I don't think it's more than that.

Looking at ML as a type of artistic filter though is interesting: and does open up some interesting use cases. I created a project in college using style transfer filters to make a short film. I think it achieved an effect that would have been unachievable without the ML. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfZ9-9tH_uE