That's just the problem -- you can't.

Not because you can't distinguish between _one_ bad piece and _one_ good piece, but because there is so much production capacity that no human will ever be able to look at most of it.

And it's not just the AI stuff that will suffer here, all of it goes into the same pool, and humans sample from that pool (using various methodologies). At some point the pool becomes mostly urine.

My email inbox is already 99% spam (urine) and I don't see any of it. The bottom line is that if a human can easily recognize AI spam then so can another AI. This has always been an arms race with spammers on one side and curators on the other. No reason to assume spammers will start winning when they have been losing for decades.

The spammers have been given a tool that’s capable of higher quality at much higher volumes.

If nothing else, it’s now much more feasible for them to be successful by sheer force of drowning out any “worthwhile” material.

This is spoken by someone who doesn't know about the huge volume of mediocre work output by art students and hobbyists. Much of it is technically decent (like AI work), but lacking in meaning, impact, and emotional resonance (like AI work). You could find millions of hand drawn portraits of Keauna Reeves on Reddit before AI ever existed.

I am not seeing the problem here.

Why does any human have to look at any art in your problem statement?

What even is "bad art" or "good art" ? Art is art, there is no classifier. Certain art works might have mass appeal or something, but I don't really think it can be put into boxes like that.