I'm a solo coder. I love coding. Never used (or trusted) AI to generate code, only to review.

But good art and especially animation, beyond basic UI and logos, is a full-time commitment that requires giving up coding while you're working on the visuals (yes many great solo devs did their own art, but I prefer using the extra time on other shit, like making music and getting on with life)

Getting a good meat-based artist to hop on my Awesome Game Idea #458235 is easier if I can show them a running gameplay example, so they can see what the actual game will be like.

Up until recently I was just using free third-party asset packs like Kenney's: https://kenney.nl/assets/1-bit-pack

That works well but carries a risk of "painting yourself into a corner"; the longer you test a game in a particular art style (or music) the more you subconsciously tend to develop the rest of the game around that style! At least for me

AI-generated PLACEHOLDER art lets me iterate on a game closer to how I envision the final product to look like, right from Day 1.

I'd still hire/kidnap an actual artist before publishing.