Still seems like a cop-out.
If they had intended to do it manually in the first place, I don’t see why they couldn’t just use AI to help generate a number of rough outlines to help conceptualize a solid template that satisfied their needs before investing their time into it.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but the anti-AI crowd has every right to be as rabid as they wish. AI proliferation has been an immense boon to a few who work in some hardware and software fields, while causing an immeasurable amount of collateral damage elsewhere. The cost-to-benefit is extremely disproportionate depending on who you are, where you live, what you do, etc.
Regardless, this is a free market. If people don’t want to buy games with AI in them, it does not make them “rabid”.
If you choose to utilize AI to help you construct your product, expect people to have feelings about it and budget for it. That’s it. It’s a small ask against the millions of other people who have been forced to completely reassess how things are done in their respective fields in order to account for rapid AI disruption and interference.