I've been deciding whether or not to wade into this discussion since my projects are (currently) reliant on AI art assets. I very much want to applaud OP for trying out themselves to form an opinion. Far too many people don't do that and they're working with conjecture.
I don't want AI to replace human artists. If I could afford an artist (really, the several artists necessary to keep up with my pace of production) then I would go right to a human every time. It's so much easier to tell an artist "Hey, this picture is BEAUTIFUL but you forgot she needs a belt...". If the AI misses the belt but you like the rest of the image, you may never actually get your vision because it might not be possible to add the belt without ruining the rest of the image.
Humans are superior as artists in almost every measurable way... even the mediocre ones. And I'm in awe of them, because while I have a music & writing background, I'm terrible with visual arts.
A lot of people see the pretty art in my project and say "AI did it all." Well.. it did a lot of the drawing, I'll admit that. But what it didn't do is go into DAZ and create the perfect pose to base the drawing on. It didn't create the stories that bring the characters to life as more than just images. Like I say on the project page for Blew It - the internet has no shortage of beautiful manga babes. You came for the story.
So I have to take several "close enough" sprites and photoshop them for hours, and hours, and hours. Blew It used AI art and it STILL took me 350 hours of development.
Mega corporations aren't all that interested in AI art for games and big projects because they may not end up owning the images produced. They can afford the expense of real artists, anyway. But a tiny little brand new game studio like mine?
Simply put, there is no artist being put out of work because I'm producing this game with AI art. I could never afford the artists in the first place, so these projects would just not get made. Either way, no human got a job from it. In fact, because of Blew It, I WAS able to hire a musician for my second VN (Wings of Angels), hence creating more growth in the art space... if not the same one.
It's my sincerest hope that if my VNs are (against all odds) super successful or something, I'll have the privilege to hire real people and share their talent. Until then, I view AI as the tool to help me get there. AI art is good... AI art can never be great.