I don’t think you’re overexaggerating the potential backlash at all; especially on Lemmy.

I don't either, like you said, 'especially on Lemmy.' The thing is, AI assisted anything is unavoidable. Even in the case of longstanding, well established projects, we're seeing AI being involved to some extent or the other. Like you, I've used AI to create a small handful of things for my server. One would be when I log in via SSH, there is a banner that pulls a random song from Navidrome's playlists and displays it on the MOTD. For instance, today's is:

🎵 SONG OF THE DAY

Blues Garage by Marco Tansini

I did make my code available here with the stipulation that it works on my machine, buyer beware, as it were. But I'd never purport to maintain it even tho I released it. For one, I don't have the patience to wade through mounds of criticism, and requests for other options. That patience left me decades ago.

instead they’d rather sit on the internet and criticize other people’s methods of coping with overload.

Preach it! Dev toils away at creating an app. Dev releases it to the public for free with no obligations whatsoever, to even consider it. Dev gets hammered for a variety of things including AI. Go make your own app and release it to the public and see how that goes. It's a mote/beam kind of thing.