Yeah, I've been mystified for years why they can't just train the "AI look" out of images. Is it, like, something undetectable by machine? But then how come we can often detect it so easily?

It does look terrible. But keep in mind these decisions aren't made to please you or me on HN. The numbers clearly show the average user does not care about the AI look because they can't really tell the difference between human-gen and AI-gen. Whatever saves them money is what they will go with.