Nota Bene: Daz Studio was first developed in 2001-2002, and DS v1.0 was initially released in October of 2005 - long before Poser 7 came out. The reason DAZ did it had more to do with survival in an uncertain time** than it did with being evil or whatever. Along the way, they found lots and lots of neat features and UI enhancements to pack into it.

I will posit that it isn't just Poser at risk these days, though.

Apps like Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and even Grok on X(!) are rapidly becoming better at making visual art these days. Each passing month makes it less "AI Slop" and more 'art'. My Boomer in-laws use Midjourney and make pin money off of it these days, FFS. Put this way: The moment an AI app comes along that can make a character which doesn't have 38 fingers, has the exact same visual looks and environments through a series of comic panels, can be done under different artistic styles (photoreal, manga sketch, celshaded toon, etc), and most importantly, doesn't require writing a novel-length prompt to create? The moment that happens, Poser is doomed. DS is doomed. I daresay even Blender will be doomed.

But... today is not (yet) that day.

Also, any or all of them can adapt and incorporate AI to make something that lets you create a unique figure/object, then let AI fill in the animation, poses ("pose this figure like the dude in this picture, rotate 90 degrees on the X-axis..."), movement, etc. The first one that does it without exploding will make a killing.


** I say "survival" because Poser swapped hands from one shaky company to the next, demanded that DAZ pay insane license fees to use dynamics and face-room stuff in Poser 5 if you used V3/Aiko/Stephanie/Laura, etc. it was a fairly turbulent time.