Nobody would complain about an AI that does that, either. The problem isn't that the AI read some code and learnt from it. The problem is that it spits it back

Nobody would complain about an AI that does that, either. The problem isn't that the AI read some code and learnt from it. The problem is that it spits it back out, but without attribution. It's like listening to a song and then reproducing and publishing a strikingly similar version of it, but claiming that you wrote it on your own.