I'm (genuinely) fascinated by people having opinions about the splash image at all. When I click through to an article my first action is to PgDn past it without even registering the image, be it a photo (on a 'normal' new site), stock, or generated.
If I actually try and think about it, I also marginally prefer AI because of the content tailoring thing, and thought the different elements that were coaxed out of the generator in this case were kinda neat.
But people forming opinions about trustworthiness from the image is entirely alien to me (this is not to say they're wrong to do so, I simply ... don't).
At least the author themselves had some input on the splash image compared to a stock photo.