It's just a marketing meme. It's actually really hard to get photos of real people in positions and context you want, and, there are so so many mitigating fact

It's just a marketing meme. It's actually really hard to get photos of real people in positions and context you want, and, there are so so many mitigating factors when there is more realism. Cartooish characters radically simplify everything. Even things like DEI - not enough 'People of Colour' , that can be changed instantly. One could just remove all of that and be judicious about the use of 'people' (Apple does that - not a lot of 'people' in the docs etc.) but then you lose the 'human connection'. People 'relate to' People. Once a few companies start doing it the 2cnd then 3rd tier follow for reasons they may not understand (copying happens a lot, it's just like 'benchmarking', it's 'easier' and 'safer'). 4th tier never cared.