People are not choosing AI due to money here. It's not the 80EUR, AAA games being copied, it's indies that are frequently in the same price range as the original.

What's actually happening is people buying knockoffs not knowing they're knockoffs, or no one buying those but the original being buried in the volume anyway.

As for the 'think about the non privileged', AI is a pretty poor answer for them. Once we're at a point where the person isn't able to pay for genuine stuff, they might as well go for piracy and emulators rather than a mindless knockoff. A world where the privileged are given intellectually stimulating material and the rest are fed empty slop is the worst possible scenario.