The problems you describe with control is severely outdated. There are tools specifically to allow you more control outside of prompts. Ipadapters, controlnets, etc… invoke and krita support layers and all sorts of other normal artistic methods for image editing. For people who use ai image gen more seriously, prompting is just the tip of the iceberg.

For the insane amount of slop generated every day though, sure, prompting is all they use.