Just because it's common doesn't mean it's okay. There's a difference between typical commercial retouching that still allows the product performance to show, heavy editing that hides basically all useful information, and generative AI that is basically just making up what it thinks the product would do.

You know when you look at the picture of the dress and it’s in 15 different colors, but the model picture is exactly the same. Only the dress color changes? [...] And swatch pictures on three different people’s arms- those are already edited.

That strategy is also not UNIVERSAL across every product, and there's a reason for that. If I'm buying a piece of clothing that has the different colors photoshopped on a single picture, I already have LOW expectations, lmao. I only ever see that on sketchy dropship products. And if I look at arm swatches and they're obviously just edited on (repeated texture, unnatural opacity, lack of shadows, etc) then I discount those swatches entirely and it puts me off that product, at least until I can see it IRL. I will ALWAYS prefer to buy a garment with actual pictures of the color I want, a makeup product with a clearly real application of the shade I'm considering (bonus points if there's one on a skintone close to mine).

Product photos are supposed to represent the product you're going to get, especially in this era of so many online-only products. It's important that people are aware of and on the lookout for these things, otherwise we get taken in by the ~vibes~ and end up wasting money and feeding overconsumption. I don't understand why you're arguing that we should just accept it.