I've been thinking about this for a little bit on and off.The latter. People say "IT'S AI ART" to everything these days because some people decided to make a big stink about image generators being bad and now it's the hip new thing to say about things you dislike
Do you think people have gotten confused about the AI character, who is an AI in the plot, and taken that to mean the art is done by AI? I'm trying to rationalise it, but I think I could see that happening if someone was a bit of an idiot.