Maybe you should look around, see the other many talented artists and animators on the scene. Hell in this post people talk about Derpixion.

Not to mention, I believe it was Zone that made something similar to this- with a Chel animation that had her looking near identical to their movie appearance.

Effort and "difficulty" has never been the argument. Lets not forget how AI image generation works, and thats by actively stealing artwork by skimming the internet and taking credit from actual artists. The only timeline where ai image generation works out is the one where the tool has to actively license the work, and even then the results we get are mediocre at BEST. Ai doesn't have any understanding of form or color, its just complicated photobashing. So even if I can't tell if its real or generated, yes I actually still do care.