The critique that any art is soulless is actually commentary on the legitimacy or perceived legitimacy of any given artform.
The bourgeois 'professional' art establishment types have been pointing the finger at "ai generated" art as soulless lately, but when you look back in history, you'll see the same people complaining about all kinds of art forms, ranging from photography to 3d with the same fear and veracity.
No claims to the soullessness of art are valid from a perspective of art history, and here's why.
There's no such thing as soulful art. Art itself is inanimate. Nobody has ever talked about the soul of art in a positive way. Accounts of anyone discussing pieces as 'soulful' are rare by comparison.
And it's generally accepted that yes, no matter how much of yourself you put into it, or not, perception of art is in fact subjective, and everybody (even the illiterate boobs that make these arguments) understands that.
It's a hell of a thing these people choose to put themselves through. In learning how to dissect art pieces in order to ascertain whether they're 'generated' by AI (something that can't even be done reliably by humans), with the foregone conclusion that they hate all synthetic art -- what they're actually doing is destroying their appreciation of all art.
And it's rotting away at their basic humanity. You can argue this point with me all you like, but all you have to do is watch them. They'll talk about it, sometimes in detail.
There isn't a day that goes by where these people don't complain about how this practice has made their brains numb and apathetic to art that they would have otherwise loved, even art they themselves consider legitimate.
A common refrain is that AI is destroying art for them, because bearing the personal responsibility for these choices is too much for their little minds to consider.
Hate destroys you from the inside, and that's what we're seeing. It can start with art, but none of this was ever really about art to begin with, was it.