Alrighty, so generative AI works by giving it training data and it transforms that data and then generates something based on a prompt and how that prompt is related to the training data it has.

That's not functionally different from how commissioned human artists work. They train on publicly available works, their brain transforms and stores that data and uses it to generate a work based on a prompt. They even often directly use a reference work to generate their own without permission from the original artist.

Like I said, there are tons of valid criticisms against Gen AI, but this criticism just boils down to "AI bad because it's not a human exploiting other's work."

And all of this is ignoring the fact that ethically trained Gen AI models exist.