What makes you think that viewers wouldn't be watching AI generated content? Considering the possibilities of fake videos, I'm sure that it can be very engaging. And the costs are zero.

The costs are not zero. I recently generated a short AI video for my son in Runway Act One. That $15 balance evaporated in like 6 prompts.

Of course, it's orders of magnitude cheaper than making a video or an animation yourself.

It was a figure of speech. Comparing to how much it can cost to make a non-AI video, this is basically free, and if we can learn from the change of costs in LLMs, the price will probably be ~10% in ~2 years from now.

Search youtube for stoicism, you'll find an overwhelming amount of generated content. And a lot of other niche subjects have been colonized like that.

And that shows that viewers won't be watching AI generated content? If anything, I think that it shows exactly what I'm saying - that there are viewers and the cost is essentially zero.