All the big companies are using AI already. They're not going to stop because of "outrage" because it saves them more money than they lose. People will grumble about AI, but they aren't going to stop using things like netflix because of it. Then it'll become normalised, and the enshittification of media will continue, where the pictures on screen barely resemble human beings any more.
The headline didn't spell this out, but the newsworthy part is that they're using an AI image and presenting it as though it were a real life photograph in the context of a documentary. They're actively using AI to advance a narrative without telling anyone, not just using it to save time or whatever.
The scary part is that that sort of social control and manipulation will be a side effect of AI. It isn't even the main reason they use it. It's just a "bonus" for the ruling class.
I don't think they're generated photos. They look like they might have been using topaz (or probably something worse/cheaper/online) to denoise and up-res-for-4k-TV really crappy digital photos from the aughts. The lower-res and noisier the original, the more detail the AI has to make up. Especially if they didn't have access to originals and were using photos taken from websites and reporting contemporary to the events, oof, there's only so much the tools can do.