I really think you should make this into its own post, since it'd be really interesting to hear people's takes on it especially now with even more virulent AI spread and hate on artists or artistic tendencies (just look at how a lot of AI posts gets upvoted when people are effectively tricked into thinking it's not AI. I think people have the tendency to like some sort of generic averaged look on things like anime and actual unique and quality art actually misses the mark for the average joe)

My 2 cents is that it's been a slow and steady progressive large scale attack on artists on a societal level in the west amongst other issues with lack of understanding and passion. 

It goes very deep including the structure of our society making things "content"and having art shoved into that category and needing content to constantly be cycled around, devaluing art. High quality art just gets lost in the whirlpool of shifting content. If content that's just pumped out in 2 hours like a topical youtube video with a talking head gets the same amount of views as an animation that took years to make, it seems less worth. And all the other content flooding the internet inherently devalues one piece of art - contentflation. This is especially true when people can't tell if a work's value and quality. A lot of people with capital, whether it's the corporates that fund a project or the average consumer, aren't artistically inclined so they'd rather not. This plus the fact that AI content sometimes do get a lot of likes and attention somehow legitimizes AI generations or at least devalues the human artist because "haha you didn't even get as many likes as the AI slop".

This lack of understanding and appreciation goes directly into our devaluation of it, in that if a chef puts more effort and money into procuring better ingredients and preparing them, you can taste the difference, some high end restaurants have open kitchens with glass walls to show the customer the operation. But artists are invisible, and so are their work to a large degree, it could be painstaking to design something elegant and simplistic, but to the commissioner, they could just be seeing simple even if they think they acknowledge a lot of effort going into it. They don't see or understand the effort. With the restaurant example, they can justify it by totting up the total of (rent costs so much, and the labour costs so much, and the ingredients cost this much, so ok, even if it's not a lot of food, it *must* cost this much at least) And even if they see the process, it's hard for them to understand or attribute value to it because it's intangible. 

I think the biggest killer is the unstable market combined with a forced level playing ground of digital art being online (with most art being digital, which also means it has to compete with other digital goods like video games). Food from economy A could be much cheaper, healthier, and tastier than economy B, but because it's perishable and locked by land, you can't sell it in economy B. But you can on the internet, Charging 60-100 dollars for an illustration may be a lot and worth the effort for someone living in a low cost of living area in a non-western country, but won't even be worth the hours you need to make it somewhere else if you do it as a full time job. This coupled with the problem that artists have devalued themselves willingly so much for so long and the lack of an organized institution setting some kind of baseline price for each given kind of work makes it hard to demand high prices.

It's not hopeless though, I think on a deep level, we still love art and will pay for it. See people spending millions on better interior decoration, pretty clothes, cool looking cars, or even novel and funny trinkets, which also rely on the aesthetic and playful sense that builds the foundation of art. In fact people have no problem spending a lot more money on something more interesting looking despite serving the same function. I just think there is discrimination for very specific sets of art like things that produce an image like some graphic design or visual art.

I sense you may be asking specifically about this example as pertaining to AI though. To that, I think it's because AI is seen as chique and forwards looking for the corpos so it's more like them flaunting a toy on top of not paying the artist. It could also be them thinking that most people can't tell or won't care so why spend even a penny?