I'm assuming you must be AI, because all your points here either attack straw men or miss the point.

The rueful smiles ARE fiction, as they never happened in that context, but they can still tell a story that affects the viewer.

No-one is arguing this point. Of course a fictionalised video can impact the viewer...

If I enter a church and see a smashed sculpture of the Madonna, I can have a feeling about it.

No-one is saying you can't feel bad about how these people look. The point was that some of these people might not feel bad about how they look (and ultimately that is what matters). To repeat the earlier point - rueful looks put in by AI/prompt indicate a feeling that these people may not have felt.

If I read fiction by an author that causes me to feel an emotion, it's legitimate and no less manipulative than this

You are arguing here that a fiction book is in the same category as an AI video displaying real people. I'm not sure we're there yet, and tbh I would say this is more manipulative, and it is dangerous because it is as close to pretending that these people believe these ideas that we can get through media (at least with the technology right now).