On a sidenote I believe this meme did not foresee webasm ;-;
I mean, we didn't choose it directly - it just turns out that's what AI seems to be really good at. Companies firing people because it is 'cheaper' this way(despite the fact, that the tech is still not perfect), is another story tho.
Interesting thought, maybe it's a mix of both of those factors? I mean, I remember using AI to work with images a few years back when I was still studying. It was mostly detection and segmentation though. But generation seems like a natural next step.
But definitely improving image generation doesn't suffer a lack of funding and resources nowadays.