This all operates under the assumption that both AI-generated and AI-assisted art is not art and does not come from an artist nor will it help artists. As a ph

This all operates under the assumption that both AI-generated and AI-assisted art is not art and does not come from an artist nor will it help artists. As a photographer, I disagree on all those fronts. As a photographer who likes to edit their photos with surrealist elements that can't be photographed - such as portals to another dimension, aliens, or anime characters - I'm doubly mad that the art I'm creating is suddenly not considered art because I'm using an AI to generate art instead of stealing the art. In the digital mashup scene stealing art for digitally editing is quite common and nobody really bats an eye as long as the digital editing is 99% of the work. Copyright is constantly ignored by the scene for the last 20 or so years that I've been a part of it. (renders, C4Ds, fractals, stock photography, etc.) Think early 2000s forum signatures. Almost all of the graphic art from that era was made using stolen art to digitally mash together and few people cared it was violating copyrights to not use exclusively permissive CC licensed works.