For me the breaking point for images in texts was stock photos.

Before that, when there was a photo in the article it was a frame from a footage from the event or the photo, or the schematic of the device the article was about or something. Something relevant to that particular piece of information.

But then everything became click-bait factory illustrated by images that fit the mood.

AI images don't make it worse. Don't make it better. But they might if they get better at relevant infographics. For now they aren't good enough because they rely on a human for understanding of what are they to depic and humans often don't care enough.

There is no "before that", not on the internet. Stock photography as a business is more than a century old, and we were using it on the internet as soon as you could put an IMG tag in a page.

Lazy use of stock imagery is a problem.