How interesting to be living in a time of transition. Watching people fight AI is like reading about teamsters diverting irrigation into roads so only horses and not cars could pass. Or like reading about pony express riders climbing telephone poles to sabotage them.
In the article, this one was just an accident even, or so it seems. Photoshop released a new, unspecified, AI-powered tool and the human artist used it. WotC at first defended the art as they believed it was human generated (and I believe they contracted a human) and retracted it.
It’ll get to the point where almost anyone can use it and it indistinguishable or even better than most human art. Right now we’re fighting, but eventually the public will either get tired or (like with cars) become the primary users of AI art and the fight will sputter out.
In a high level campaign I ran, I took the design philosophy that the villains were supernatural (e.g, dragon or lich), the average npc was weak (level 3 or less), and the characters were once-in-a-1000-years heros (level 10-20).
Every now and then they would have an obstacle involving regular humanoids or the local government and they had the option of just steamrolling everything (even whole platoons). It provided a great contrast to the magic-boss death matches and let the characters really feel special.
It also drove home that they were the only ones who could save the day.