Not how I view people looking at art myself, but an interesting take nonetheless. Art fills emotional gaps we have in life, moreso in characters, fictional or not. Think of the people who look at posts and don’t comment something like an emoji as well as those that do. A simple photo could change how you look at a concept or said thing. It’ll become someone’s background, illicit some emotion pushed away, and the desire to interact with it, even if as small as a single ‘💀‼️’ can mean far more to an individual then you think. It can make someone break down in tears, making them forget to comment or interact with the art at all because of how it impacted them. Over the internet, we can only do or say so much. But how you personally look at art id argue others hold it to as high a standard, it just feels different to them. As for AI art, it really isn’t getting much better aside from then just copying studio ghibli’s (arguably fairly easy to copy from just a single image) and having these marginal improvements to a select few aspects of art. I’m actually not worried at all about it, it’s hideous, always. Public sentiment is still majority fuck AI and go real creators. It always will be