For many small project is AI images or no images at all.
When you do not have money you are not hiring a 2000€/month artist to do imagery for your website. You go online to copy something or nowadays you can use AI to wrap it up. It’s a tool at people’s disposition like anyother.
And before anyone comes talking about copyright laws… shall I present them my 10 TB hard drive of pirated media? Human culture is to be shared, not gatekeeped.