"Procedural generation doesn't automatically mean that the artist has no control" - It means they have less control, and they always bitch and moan about that.
You bring good points, but you forget one things - artists love control. Take that away from them and they cry like babies who lost their candy.
Procedural art is really cool if you can think about your asset as a programmer - but you need to remember artists do not think like us. If you are willing to replace your artists with tech artists though, that's a different story (note: normally those people are rare, and stay in one field programming shaders).
"The problem there? Everything looks the same." -- Yes, that's exactly the desired consequence by artists, and as mentioned, will cry if their flexibility is revoked by tools they are not familiar with (in house model/texture generators).
While you as a programmer think of a texture of "noise and color", artists think about it as brush strokes, materials and emotions.