The somewhat cynical but honest answer is that all articles need some kind of pretty image at the top because when you share a link on any social media platform, the platform looks for an image to use as a thumbnail. If it doesn't find one, it gets posted as just a plain link and almost no one clicks it.
This is why Medium requires an image on every post, why every programming blog out there puts random pictures of laptops and coffee cups at the top of their articles, why Unsplash is so popular, and now why AI-generated images at the top of posts are so common.
It's dumb.
