When I've worked with graphical artists if the idea is tough to explain I usually include some rather awful mocks. I postulate in that regard Dalle could be used as an intermediary step to create visually appealing mocks for graphical designers to realise and expand upon.
This is what I thought as soon as I saw the blog post, but in reverse: as a tool for graphic artists.
My wife ended to turning her artistic abilities into a greetings cards / wedding stationery because her social anxiety and low self esteem make it extremely difficult for her to work through the process of figuring out what the customer actually wants and how much she should charge for a commission. The way she describes it, many customers think that they can give you a one-sentence request and get back exactly what's inside their head, except that there is nothing inside their head at all, just a very loose idea. Essentially, they want to flip through an infinite set of mock-ups (that they don't pay for) until they finally stab one with their finger and say "THIS!", but they have no idea in advance what "this" is. When they finally come to payment, they only want to pay for the time it took you to produce the final result, which is "just a simple design!"
In fact, the red-flag customers sound like this: "Hello. I'm looking for the simplest thing in the world and it probably won't take an amazing artist like you 15 minutes to make. It'll be used as a logo at our business so it would be great publicity for you!"
Person doesn't value your skill and will try to low-ball you. Ask them to clarify their one-sentence request and they say "Oh, you know, just a simple logo with something nautical on it". Tell them you'll charge for every set of mock-ups as you slowly figure out what they want, and they disappear.
I think that tools like these could be the first step in your journey with a customer. They have to explain to AI what they want, and refine their statement to the point where it produces "mock-ups" something in the right ballpark. Then you can take their top 3 results and talk through them.
Hah. That could be a great way to use those models. "Talk to the AI until you know what you want, then I'll make it for you".
I'm totally with your wife, btw, the attitude of her customers sounds horrible. On the other hand, my experience is that one artist took my $25 and has still not produced what he agreed three months later, and yet asked me if I had more work for him. Another guy offered to do it for free and did it for free in a few days and then refused to accept my money when I explained that I was already paying another guy for the same task so it was only fair that I paid him, too. This was some cover art for a vanity project of mine and I was asking for free contributions but also paid the first artist because he was evidently trying to become a professional. Fat chance of that. Bottom line, if you want good art you have to find the people who are passionate about it.
Oh and image models can't create the art I want, because it's text-based art. Even if they could generate the images I want, they couldn't output them in ASCII or ANSI. In fact I tried and they give me kind of pixelated results, but not recognisably text-character based.