For one, you never see the top games use AI-generated art, just demos of some weirdo’s slop project that doesn’t actually function correctly (no play testing, maintenance, etc.)

This is the point touching point. If this is snake oil, why there isn't harder pushback?

If this tool is fated to be a lie, why the big corps are embracing so hard?

And the main discussion around this topic is about the ethical (is it right for companies like OpenAI to scrape art without permission from artists?), moral (is it right to use this tool?), and legal (copyright is ignored by scrapers) issues. Everybody knows the things it spits out are of poor quality, but that’s not why most people dislike it.

I've a lot to talk on this. And I've plenty of posts on the topic. To the point I've this in my mind:

[...] either we accept that copyright is gone, or we ban the usage of AI. Both can’t live under the same country’s laws.

Which again is part of the discussion, but I was focused on the asset generation instead of the legal part of it.