Looking for some perspective from artists and devs.

I'm the programmer on a small indie team. We're working on a cozy detective sorting game set in a 90s police precinct. We have two 3D artists and a dedicated prop artist who have been working non-stop in Blender for weeks hand-modeling and texturing hundreds of unique case files, binders, stamps, safes, 90s CRT workstations etc.

We recently asked one of our 3D artists to share some previews on Reddit from his account. Instead of regular game feedback, the threads immediately got buried in downvotes and aggressive pushback. People seem to have developed huge fatigue toward the sorting subgenre because of recent low-effort clones, so the immediate assumption was: *"Just another lazy AI asset-flip"*

One of the comments literally said:  
*"Buy an asset pack, dump it in a room, make AI vomit garbage, 'look what I made'."*

It was so demoralizing that he literally doesn't have the mental energy to read Reddit comments or post anymore. He completely shut down.

I watch these guys spend late nights making every single prop from scratch by hand without using AI or pre-made asset packs, only to see the internet immediately dismiss their hard work as prompt-generated junk.

I get why gamers are paranoid about AI cashgrabs on Steam, but it sucks seeing genuine craft treated as guilty until proven innocent just because of current genre fatigue.

How do you deal with this kind of skepticism? How do you usually show your process so people recognize real human work?

Spent weeks in Blender handcrafting hundreds of stylized props & dossiers. First comment: "AI vomited garbage". How do you deal with this paranoia?