So even though they didn’t pay an artist or license an image, they still had to print/make the blanket, distribute it via truck… it’s not gonna be free, or (much) less expensive than one that doesn’t use AI slop for the art.

A company that makes these and licenses them may pay less for, say, KPop Demon Hunters (Netflix) than they would for, say, Zootopia 2 (Disney), and they’d pay even less for AI slop (nothing). But they’re going to normalise the prices and sell all of them at the same price. Even if the first two were all they sell, they’re not gonna sell the Zootopia one for $5 more than the KPop Demon Hunters one because Disney charges more to license IP than Netflix does. They will sell for the same price. And because the Disney one will sell more, that’s what they’re going to lean more towards, and the Netflix one with the cheaper licensing will be more profit.

I’ve paid $30-40 for licensed blankets. My wife and I have blankets with licensed art from Fallout (game series), The Promised Neverland, and Tokyo Ghoul (both anime and manga series). They make more profit from AI stuff, but even before AI, they’d just license stock art for far less than they’d pay to use art from a commercial IP. Like a galaxy, or a psychedelic pattern. Not AI slop, but not something they had to pay much for, if anything.