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.

But beyond that, what I think the average person who may not have an eye for art or an attention to details might not understand is, a lot of AI art that comes across as convincing to the untrained eye is still, at the very least, living deep in the uncanny valley.

Much in the same way that an AI voice or video can look somewhat convincing but a little bit off, the same thing is true for AI artwork. People who are artists or who have at least learned to see the nuance in art can often see the weirdness in generative AI "art", even if it is sometimes hard to explain exactly why it feels off (maybe it's the subtlety of the lighting, the shape design, the line quality, etc.).

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...