To me there are different motivations to include imagery and some of them are just fine with AI generation. If the imagery actually goes to the substance of helping to illustrate or explain the actual content then it seems very superficial to reject it based on how it was generated. In fact it is kind of stupid to insist someone slavishly draw something by hand that could have been done an easier way.
The problem comes when the imagery is placed as a false value signal. If it is designed to send a signal of "this content took a lot of effort to produce because an image that would be hard for a human to make is attached to it" - but the image was generated without that effort, then it's basically a lie and insult to the reader.
The problem comes when the imagery is placed as a false value signal. If it is designed to send a signal of "this content took a lot of effort to produce because an image that would be hard for a human to make is attached to it" - but the image was generated without that effort, then it's basically a lie and insult to the reader.