Sadly hand drawn art is way too expensive for a project of this scale, with the current budget, thus the AI art. I do hire an AI artist to do it, as he is very good at making it. The price gap compared to an actual artist is too great though.
Its still not perfect and I too would prefer if I could hire an actual artist to do the images, but thats the best that can be done for now.
I have an upcoming project that won't have any AI art, in fact no AI at all, in it so stay tuned for it. Similar to all my games, it will also not be just a visual novel, so expect something never seen in the FMG game space before.