Maybe the small studios just use it as a tool and don’t need to hype it to make it look good for stock holder interests.

That's what semi-recent whining about Larian saying they use AI was about. They just use it to cut some of the boring work and iterate over some ideas, once the idea is in stone actual artist does it.

I don't see the problem because it isn't cutting more artists out of the loop, if anything they get more of the meaningful work