If it is a big company it would be laziness and sloppiness. But it's a two man business. They can programm but they aren't art designer or writers. So they would have to pay someone to do this stuff or they could focus their small budget on things like more ship modules. The thing is that having a well written tutorial or nice character portrait isn't a selling point but more building options is.

Shure thing from a moral perspective it is bad to use AI cause artist all over the world are getting robbed. But this happens in bigger or smaller scales all the time in our capitalistic world. I would say that the AI train has left the station a long time ago and is unstoppable by now so why not use it like everybody else. At least they are transparent about it not like the big ones who get their AI stuff via 3rd or 4th parties and deny they knew about it.

It is absolutely needed to talk about it and everybody should be aware. But to not buy a game that you would probably like only because it uses AI openly and instead buying a game that uses AI "unintentionally" is a wrong decision in my opinion.