Now I'm not going to lie and tell you all the engagement I get is just because I'm such an active and wonderful person, I'm sure there's people who hope for more things than a small comment upvote when interacting with myself such as a follow or checkup on their account but I think it's fine that it works that way and that they try to do so, especially if they're newer accounts being overlooked and trying to do hive the right way.
Do people come for you, or do they come for the upvote? Who knows? As I've powered down in the past and then (and now) slowly starting to power back up, I'm not necessarily seeing a change in the way people engage with me over the years.
What sees the biggest change in engagement on my stuff is how much I engage with the stuff of others. If I engage a lot, they get curious and end up thinking "who the crap is this guy anyway"? And I end up seeing them pop up on my new post.
Or, I get people unfollow me if... they don't like my new posts, I guess :D
Regarding the AI generation thing - I'm not done with my study into comments, I was going to spend a good chunk of today looking further into what I can do to generate a confidence score about how "AI" comments are on the chain.