I fucking hate AI art slop. I hate it.
But
This seems like a case where the authors are being punished for the bad behavior of their publishers. Authors have very little control over this sort of thing, and yeah, you can say "they should have chosen a better publisher" or whatever... but book publishing is an extremely crowded market, and authors aren't exactly spoiled for choice when it comes to finding someone to publish their work.
I think the publishers should absolutely be shamed and dragged through the mud for this, but let the authors compete. As long as there's no evidence they used AI to write anything, let their work stand on its own merit rather than judging a book by a cover they had no control over.