Just want to learn - who actually needs or buys up generated images?

I follow an author who publishes online on places like Scribblehub and has a modestly successful Patreon. Over the years he has spent probably tens of thousands of dollars on commissioned art for his stories, and he's still spending heavily on that. But as image models have gotten better this has increasingly been supplemented with AI-images for things that are worth a couple dollars to get right with AI, but not a couple hundred to get a human artist to do them

Roughly speaking the art seems to have three main functions:

1. promote the story to outsiders: this only works with human-made art

2. enhance the story for existing readers: AI helps here, but is contentious

3. motivate and inspire the author: works great with AI. The ease of exploration and pseudo-random permutations in the results are very useful properties here that you don't get from regular art

By now the author even has an agreement with an artist he frequently commissions that he can use his style in AI art in return for a small "royalty" payment for every such image that gets published in one of his stories. A solution driven both by the author's conscience and by the demands of the readers

Some ideas for your consideration:

- Illustrating blog posts, articles, etc.

- A creativity tool for kids (and adults; consider memes).

- Generating ads. (Consider artisan production and specialized venues.)

- Generating assets for games and similar, such as backdrops and textures.

Like any tool, it takes certain skill to use, and the ability to understand the results.

During the holiday season I've been noticing AI-generated assets on tons of meatspace ads and cheap, themed products.

Dying businesses like newspapers and local banks, who use it to save the money they used to spend on shutterstock images? That’s where I’ve seen it at least. Replacing one useless filler with another.