Yeah, articles are including the image because they can. If a judge had instead ruled that AI generated works were copyrightable (and to the prompter, not the designer of the tool, owner of the hardware, or even the tool itself) the end result would be that very few orgs would include his piece instead just opting for generating their own (now copyrightable) image to use as an example. He’d still get nothing, but then significantly fewer people would see his “work.”
Honestly, most Americans should be worried about fraud. Republicans have spent the last 4 years putting election deniers in key positions of power, purging voters’ registrations, and changing laws on how someone can vote and whose vote counts. There are at least 2 Supreme Court Justices that bought into the lie last time and will not hesitate to give the win to Trump if given the opportunity. They tried to fraudulently steal the last one and the same people are still in power. They will try again. The only legal way to stop them is to vote in such high numbers against them that the decision is never sent to Congress or the courts to resolve.