Take a genuine interest in their obsessions. Not a performative "I want you to see I like this for you" but a real "I've been going out and doing this on my own for the past few weeks/months and I want to talk about it"
You do actually have to do it, they'll spot your bullshit before you speak it.
Uh, no. The vast majority of skills utilized by digital artists apply across any software and with analog tools as well just as we've used them for hundreds of years. They are quite capable of producing similar works without digital tools at all. You cannot say the same for someone refining a prompt for a piece of software that scrapes everything from other people's creativity.
The closest analog would be an art director for a collage project. That is what an AI artist does.