An AI Vase of dry flowers - controversial

(No longer available for purchase)

This is a simple image to execute but it is controversial.

I asked AI to generate this image and then I painted it in Acrylics. Then, I deleted the AI Image.

Now - who is the Author?
Is it me, the Prompter?
Is it AI, the creator?
Is it me, as I chose it from many others?
Is it AI, as it did all the work in finding it and generating it?
Is it me, because it is manually painted?
Can it be still an AI, even though I deleted the image?

All of those questions sparkeled a lot of opinions in this reddit post. So far, the image was viewed about 1 million times. Probably more by now as I still get comments on it 2 months after.

A3 (42x30 cm) (16.5x11.7 in), Acrylics