Knocking off a book by changing some character names is common. So in spirit, yes you can't make a movie based on a book without licensing. In practice we have

Knocking off a book by changing some character names is common. So in spirit, yes you can't make a movie based on a book without licensing. In practice we have stealth book adaptations without license. We even have movies licensing a book, and then ignoring everything EXCEPT the names of few characters. With AI you need to prove that picture A.jpg was based on work B.jpg. How are you going to do that? "It looks similar" is not a proof I used your picture.