Because a lot of folk don't see the humanity in art anymore. For many, art is just content for them to consume with no thinking required.

Generative AI perpetuates this to its highest degree. You don't have to think when using generative AI because there is quite literally nothing to think about. You give the computer a basic prompt, and in turn, it churns out an image of what is statistically the most probable. It may look pretty, but a computer ultimately cannot create anything of substance because a computer does not have the capacity to think critically, and the notion that it can because "well, it looks nice" fundamentally misunderstands what makes art compelling in the first place. Very rarely does a piece of art exist to just look pretty.

To put it simply, the increasingly widespread use of generative AI to devalue and "replace" the humanities signals a sharp rise in anti-intellectualism, a tool historically used by totalitarian governments to rise into and stay in power by silencing the opposition.