So, I 100% agree.

The key here is there are many assets, like textures, etc, where you want to better convey intent from the design team to the art team.

And, if you aren't trying to actually sneak in AI assets and "cheat", you can actually very easy make the AI assets visually obvious.

Like just slap a bright purple watermark on them that says "PLACEHOLDER" or etc

Thats very normal.

The companies claiming "oh whoopsie that asset accidently made it in" are just blatantly lying.

If they really wanted to ensure the assets didnt make it into the final build, its very easy to tag files, name them a certain way, watermark them, have a build pipeline that checks, etc to make it super obvious if you accidently included them.

You should just assume companies pretending this wasn't possible are just lying. They thought theyd get away with it and got caught and hoped ppl would buy their excuse.