But you can't make it creative. You can't say "give me something cool" and have it produce something of note.

Yes, you can absolutely play god of the gaps.

How am I doing that? I am claiming that LLMs lack imagination. They are incapable of creating out of whole cloth or interpretation.

Saying they cannot create based off of a vague suggestion is very much in line with that claim. I consider it a vital difference between Stephen King being inspired and LLMs mashing training inputs together.