I was barely taking the viewer into consideration, some people will just like what they like regardless and some will kind of "feel" something in/behind a piece. Like personally with concept art in particular I have seen so many technically amazing pieces that feel completely empty and so many pieces that were "rough" and "unfinished" and nowhere near the same level of technically amazing but "felt" so much better. I've stopped following/caring about actuallhy amazing artists on dA because they eventually started doing more of the stuff that paid their bills (catering to their patrons) which made them a whole lot less interesting for me.
I figured a similar thing will happen with AI content once it stops being shiny if it's not happening already.
You're probably right in that many people creating content regualrly these days are doing it for monetary reasons, I have the opposite thing as I remember (back in MY day XD) when blogging was new and shiny and basically somewhere between and online "open diary" and an interesting new way of communicating with people (not quite a personalised forum that only you or very select people could top level post in but not far off).