The system will "assemble them in the way the author is requesting" if you use an extremely detailed prompt: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40217685 But the reason this prompt is necessary is that the system does not understand human language with the same depth as a toddler: AI needs way too much extra help. The problem is not that these things are poorly drawn: they are semantically incorrect.
It is like the "horse riding an astronaut" example which art generators still routinely screw up[1]. AI knows what "astronaut" and "person riding a horse" look like, so it can draw "astronaut riding a horse" just fine, using shallow reasoning. But since they don't understand what "horse" "riding" or "astronaut" mean, and no clue what "horse rides a person" looks like, their shallow reasoning fails.
But a child who actually understands human language would probably be able to draw a horse riding an astronaut - I know I could and I suck at drawing. It wouldn't be nearly as clean or detailed as DALL-E 3, but it would be semantically correct. The difference is that children understand what horses and astronauts are, and can use physical reasoning to imagine how a horse might ride an astronaut piggyback/etc. Art generators do not understand what horses are and are incapable of physical reasoning.
[1] https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/horse-rides-astronaut-redu...