> Nobody is trying to appeal to "pro-AI crowd"

Oh yes they are, there's a lot of games (or at least, promises of future games) that promise to be 100% vibe-coded or that make heavy use of AI in a way thats very prominent to the player. There was an example just last week:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3730100/Whispers_from_the...

> And losing the small portion of the vocal-always-complaining crowd (who odds are, wasnt part of their audience to begin with), is not a loss at all.

That seems like a very different crowd to me. I've been around the industry long enough to see the signs of that, and I don't see that much from the anti-ai crowd, or at least not in any more significant numbers. See: the project zomboid AI art issue

But like I say, for an indie, yes losing a small audience can still be a big loss.