Even without AI there's an awful lot of random stock photos. Years ago I remember I searched for and found a stock image of a woman tied to the train tracks of one of those kids mini train things, also there was like a few to pick from. I swear it was in some way relevant to the presentation that was giving but they can't remember details.
Bonus question, was being a stock photo model a "full time job" or it was more an actor/model job that you do between more interesting projects ?
That said, with the ridiculous price of stock photo, and the remaining glitches in AI model, not sure whether it's really cheaper to generate an AI image (Need to get high resolution image, and to review them, you don't want a bad buzz because a necklace didn't close or whatever glitches are left) . It's basically depending whether some stock photo bank have implemented a natural language search.
I'm not certain if it's a full-time position, but I'm aware there are part-time model agencies that hand out odd jobs here and there. The ones I've come across were for clothing catalogues and so on, but I imagine they exist for stock photos too.
Don't know if it's a full time job, but I work with stock photos for a range of clients, and there are some people you see pop up in dozens of pics, covering all sorts of differing scenarios. There's one particular older woman, with very short white hair, who I've seen over and over and over again, it's weird.