Indeed. There's an older distinction between "handmade/artisinal" vs "mass produced" which matters here. At first thought, shouldn't the machine made version using modern statistical process control be better?

What actually happens is that the process control version uses that predictability to dial down the average quality while keeping the product just above total failure level.

AI takes this a step further: it allows cost cutting by replacing human processes with nondeterministic uncontrolled statistical processes. Some percentage of AI users will just be given a dud experience. For which they will, not unreasonably, blame the AI.

So AI becomes a negative quality signal. I've already observed "uses AI generated images" being interpreted as "product is obviously fake and/or bad".

(consumers are very much complicit in this by always choosing the cheaper option - but see Akerloff "Market for Lemons", that may be economically rational if you can't properly distinguish quality!)