The more I think about it, I think it will (and should) turn on the extent to which "the law" considers the AI's to be more like "people" or more like "machines

The more I think about it, I think it will (and should) turn on the extent to which "the law" considers the AI's to be more like "people" or more like "machines?" People can read and do research and then spit out something different. But "feeding the data into a machine" seems like obvious infringement, even if the thing that comes out on the other end isn't exactly the same?