Your thinking too narrowly about the reward. Sometimes, it's just about the getting the knowledge out there that's motivating the creator, not anything tangible for themselves.
> it's just about the getting the knowledge out there that's motivating the creator
In that case the creator should welcome AIs with open arms; a human reader will forget eventually, but the AI will preserve the knowledge forever.
If "getting the knowledge out there" is the motivation then it shouldn't matter whether the knowledge gets filtered through an AI or not.