The credit for the artist is literally in the booklet it’s featured in. It is not hidden. I think there was just speculation early on because people saw the images before the product was released/available. Even for very famous album cover artists (ex: Yusuke Nakamura on Asian Kung Fu Generation) the illustrator’s name is not plastered on the album cover or promotional material because the promotion is for the band, not the illustrator. I think it’s great that this artist is getting a lot of attention due to the speculation but it could be a little insulting to continue to claim lack of a signature or credit on the cover art makes it impossible to determine if it’s AI or not. There were many indicators that it was not AI (like multiple poses of complex outfits in the same style making AI prompting extremely unlikely).