Indeed — if corruption isn't exposed at the local level, those people will continue to increase their ill-gotten power.

If the question is whether to use human art and reporting (e.g., photos taken in the real world with a physical camera) vs. illustrations by AI, I would only use human stuff. An AI image might "look pretty" at a brief glance, but it can't add information. Any fact-checked information it contains was included in the prompt someone gave it. The prompt could instead have been given to a human illustrator (who might add info), or the assignment could have been given to a photojournalist (who might capture new info). Having a human artist/photographer involved in the process allows for more thoughtfulness and fact-checking. A computer-generated image might degrade the quality of the information. It could just make stuff up.

BTW, in my article, the squirrel photo was uploaded to Pixabay in 2021 and on that basis I assume it to be a collage by a human artist, hence it has a certain charm to me. I trust readers to recognize that it's obviously not a photo from real life so I didn't bother to say so. I find AI much less charming, and I personally avoid using any stock images made from about 2023 onward if they look like they may be AI-generated.