I'm not an artist so I don't have much stake in this one way or the other. However, I've often wondered about the complaint of using data sets with copyrighted images. I think that complaint misses how AI works (or is supposed to work). Are humans not also influenced by copyrighted works? Whether an intelligence is artificial or natural I'm not sure I see the difference in that regard. To say that AI shouldn't "look at" copyrighted works is a similar argument to saying human artists should not look at copyrighted works. That is somewhat dependent on how good the AI actually is. The better it is, the more true that becomes.

Having said that, I think AI could make art that is just as good by not using any copyrighted works. There's practically an infinite amount available. I guess the challenge is in assembling a data set that is suitably large while ensuring it is free of copyrighted works.

And having said that, I still see the value of having rules banning AI. However, it will be impossible to tell in the very near future (with or without copyrighted images in the dataset). It almost already is. Like it or not, AI is here to stay.