Crude MS-Paint drawings are the best placeholder art. Scribbles can be made as fast, if not faster than AI. It shows the information it needs to show, but most importantly its incredibly obviously unfinished art that needs to be redone before release.
AI art looks pretty good at a distance without close inspection. You have to look closely and spend time to tell AI from art. Late in production when rushing for the deadline is not a point when you have the time to look closely at the assets, so AI placeholders will get missed.
And what you describe is probably the best case scenario, that the well meaning artist misses it in a rush.
In the real world much of the time I bet the artist is well aware and frustrated because the game already shipped (with no input from them or their boss) to make it by the end of the quarter and now the press assets all have some bland slop BS front and center instead of the real version staring back from their own monitor.
Crude MS-Paint drawings are the best placeholder art. Scribbles can be made as fast, if not faster than AI. It shows the information it needs to show, but most importantly its incredibly obviously unfinished art that needs to be redone before release.
AI art looks pretty good at a distance without close inspection. You have to look closely and spend time to tell AI from art. Late in production when rushing for the deadline is not a point when you have the time to look closely at the assets, so AI placeholders will get missed.
Placeholders is a bad use case for AI.
And what you describe is probably the best case scenario, that the well meaning artist misses it in a rush.
In the real world much of the time I bet the artist is well aware and frustrated because the game already shipped (with no input from them or their boss) to make it by the end of the quarter and now the press assets all have some bland slop BS front and center instead of the real version staring back from their own monitor.