Not before being unknowingly sold to the public

Well, if that was truly forgotten in the game at release, and removed once discovered, I don't see any problem. The textures that are used now are 100% hand made by actual artist, to my knowledge.

My problem with AI is its heavy usage of plagiarism and vast degree of power consumption, as well as the price hikes its caused for many computer parts.

I entirely agree with you there.
The plagiarism problem is in my opinion partly resolved by open datasets (OpenOrca, and the like), which means the user has the possibility of choosing to not rely on plagiarism. Problem is that the models trained with those dataset are rarely available on public platform, which is another reason why I use my own infrastructure.
Personally I use Mistal-7B-OpenOrca on a locally run Ollama, which reside in my homelab.
The power consumption is a problem, and the reason why I use my own dedicated hardware for anything related to AI (which has also the advantage of heating my home a little bit, so nothing is lost 😆).
I even invested in a laptop with dedicated AI hardware to be able to make it as efficient as possible. And of course got hit by the AI taxe, albeit I was lucky to get 32Go DDR5 at only twice the usual rate instead of five time the usual rate as it is currently the case.

Whenever anything is attempting to make money, it should be put under the highest scrutiny. It does not matter who's pushing it. Similarly, I find it odd that we're assuming the inner workings of Clair Obscur's workplace

You are partly right. But when machine replaced some of the human hard labor in industry, we welcomed it. Who would want to make a car with a hammer when an hydraulic press is available? AI is a tool that should be used to ease the burden of doing repetitive small task in order to focus on what's one want to do. Can I blame someone for using placeholder texture, being AI or from an asset store, instead of spending days making the rocks look just right when you aren't even sure the project will ever be funded?

But I don't think they the the kind of guys to seek wealth or fame. They put their energy in a project they believed in, can we blame them to have used the tools they had in hand to try making the most of their limited budget ?

If you replaced AI here with anything defamatory, like pictures of penises placed by an enraged employee after being fired, then even having a few would be devastating on sales. The single fact that we're okay with a few means that, over time, that bar will likely be pushed further down the road "oh, it's just this one character that practically never shows up" "oh, it's just the skyboxes, they're basically not noticeable anyway" "who cares if the early access uses AI voices? They'll be replaced eventually!"

You'd be surprised how often it happen for former angry employees to do that. We even had example in some Disney, with very explicit scenes even going all the way to customers.
I never said that they where OK with it, just that no one can be expected to check every little texture without being expected to miss some of them. Human are prone to fatigue, and I saw many bugs going in production due to such errors of judgement.
As for using AI during early access, IMO it depends on the size of the project. And one man project ? Totally fine, even after launch. A full 400 men project from a big publisher? Not so much, they have to mean to do it by hand. Especially considering how expensive they sell it afterward.
Clair Obscur being a mostly 30 men project (plus some occasional extras), I, personally, don't see AI usage as a problem as soon as it is sparsely used.

I assure you, AI is not popular. Studies have shown that AI is causing people more concern than excitement Not the most reputable source, but oh well

I'm speaking about Clair Obscur, not AI. Don't you feel surprised that as soon as they get a big boost from the game award, you see people left and right creating dramas for whatever reason they find? Some forgotten AI texture in the final game? Really?

Blue Prince does use AI assets No it didn't

My apology for jumping on that bandwagon. I'm unfortunately not totally immune to that either 😅

On the other hand, IGA did forbid AI on the whole project pipeline, and if I find it a bit overblown, it is their choice, and I'll respect that.
What baffles me is all the hate Clair Obscur got because of that. The vast majority was made by hand, and the game is good. If the story was AI gen, or the music, I'd agree, but a fucking texture? In which way would it suddenly make a multiple year project shit like some pretends?