The reason why people want to pay peanuts to begin with is that they are cheap and they wanted to get it for free using AI but they can't and humans are seen as disposable.
What do you mean? I don't see how setting an art budget in
commercial space is in anyway relevant to their point of view on humans.
There are still people who paid $5000 for a piece of art from big name artists in the industry for marketing purposes, because the marketing value from them generates more money than what they paid. Are you trying to say people are paying that much money because they see human as not-disposable or something?
And then there are people who paid $10 for a drawing on DeviantArt or Fiverr WAY before AI art exists, or they use stock images on Shutterstock. Are you saying all of them see human as disposable?
Just FYI, those people who paid $10-$20 for a drawing on DeviantArt before AI images are often just poor students or individuals who wants a hentai picture for "quick visual entertainment" or a cool forum avatars. They are paying that little because those images just aren't generating more values for them. And now AI is replacing human in this price tier because it was already not high price tier market with high return before.
I failed too see HOW price tiers existed is anyway relevant to how people see humans. It feels like an very forced assumption to me.