"After all, AI could lower the costs and time needed for their productions, even though it would deliver a worse product."
Why do you assume it would deliver a worse product. The in-between animators are easily ai replaceable and AI has come a long way to the point where you can't distinguish fully AI generated videos from reality a lot of the time. The fact that you have this bias against AI purely based on emotion and not statistics isn't a good look. If AI makes the animation look as good or better it shouldn't matter whether an animator gets paid 30 cents to do an in-between frame or an ai does it in less time to a higher standard for free.
