I use image thumbnails for my blog posts as well but they don't even show up in the article. Instead when the article is linked to on twitter or a message the thumbnail will show up. That's to say that this is pretty awesome and very valuable for a blog even if not used for cringy pop-gif stuff in the article.
How would you even know it's AI generated at this point? Did you see the images generated by the author of the article? They might as well have been made by a human digital artist
they're great. but if you have no image relevant to an article to put in the header/thumbnail, what value does using a cringy stock photo or generic cutesy cartoon add?
the infotainment/clickbait/gossip websites do that because they know their target audience. you don't need to do that on your tech blog