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Whether that's cheating depends on what you're trying to do with it and where you're showing the result. If you're passing it off as your own artwork or submitting it for a course, that's definitely not okay - it's about honesty. But if you're doing it as a study or experiment for yourself, to learn how to work with composition, light, and forms, then it's a legitimate tool just like any other reference.
I'd approach the question differently: What are you actually learning from it? If you take an AI-generated template and then really draw - meaning you're actually working with pen or brush, correcting mistakes, grappling with proportions and shading - then you're genuinely training your skills. That's more like painting a sketch based on a photograph, except your reference happened to be created digitally.
It becomes problematic only when you sell the whole thing as "my artwork" or turn it in for an art class without mentioning it. Then you're being dishonest about your process. But using it privately to learn or as practice? I don't see a big issue there. Lots of people work from references - painters painting from photos, artists using references they found online. The only difference is the AI generated the reference instead of an actual person photographing something.
If the finished drawing really comes from you (your hand movements, your decisions), then how you got there matters less than the actual skill you're gaining.
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