E33 had one (1) of these early generated assets, in the earliest area of the game, essentially on the side and easy to miss as you try and make sure the game gets out the door. All fits together in context. I fully believe they were acting in good faith, and it wasn’t “sorry we got caught 🥺”
Again with long gamedev timelines I fully believe the next year or two we’ll see more or less the same scenario playing out across more big budgets. Stuff that was slapped in at an early stage as a placeholder, thinking the flaws of early generation would make it obvious, and being patched out.
DALL-E was a fun curiosity at one point because the end results were kind of fucked up and weird and obviously blending into one another. It was uncanny, but worked well enough that you might be tempted to make an asset with it in early days as a placeholder. Likely what Sandfall did with E33.