Sure... I'm all for giving people the benefit of the doubt, to some degree.

Unfortunately however, we do now exist in a zero trust world where you can't always naively believe what you see to be authentic and legitimate... If I was going to commission or hire an artist to do some paid work today, I would need to at least see some kind of "proof of work".

Because of the ethical implications of generative AI, people have every reason and right to be suspicious and critical of work that looks like it could be generated by AI. People who use AI understand this too, but sadly many of them choose the path of fraudulence and lying instead of reflecting on themselves.

When people make something like this, which to me is so obviously AI slop, and then is bold enough to try to deny it, it just adds insult to injury, frankly. "You can fool some people sometime, but you can't fool all the people all the time." These dudes want to pee on our legs and tell us it's raining...