the AI works currently still online are the ones deemed to be of quality and weren’t the ones causing the mods headaches
Just because the image is here doesn’t mean it has been “approved” or that it’s not a continuing or ongoing headache. One of the biggest headaches is “but what about this one” style questions in support, or people continuing to report images that have been previously reported for anything from Rule #1 to Rule #5.
And they are already “out of sight”. People had to opt in to see them, but that certainly didn’t reduce the amount of moderation effort they and the comments on them caused.
And I’m not sure that it would reduce our workload if there were a whole new class of “hosted only for the purposes of hotlinking” that represent images that can’t be uploaded under the new rules - it would be like grandfathering them, and would give us a set of legacy images that still have to be moderated if they are reported for style emulation or showing underage explicit content, and will still be referenced by people complaining about their upload having been deleted.
Plus any reports against the comments on them. After they’re deleted, we don’t have to deal with “that person said a bad thing” reports on comments in them any more. But if they’re still here, they’re still here.