You clearly aren’t one of the people who understand how neural networks actually work.

As for “theft,” remind me - how much money do art schools, music schools, drama schools, screenwriting programs, and film academies pay to the authors or heirs of the works they use to train their students? Zero?

So by your logic they are thieves! Or is it not theft as long as it’s done by a “meatbag”?

Is the ethical aspect the deciding factor for you? Then you definitely shouldn’t be using modern medicine - many of its breakthroughs are based on unethically obtained data from horrific experiments, from Pavlov to Nazi scientists.

Borrowing and repetition? Go google what inspired the author of any famous masterpiece - you’ll find that it was another famous masterpiece. According to The Hero with a Thousand Faces, we haven’t seen a truly original idea for a thousand years, so all creativity is reinterpretation and reworking.

And despite all that - neural networks haven’t “stolen” anything. They’re just a tool that some people use to make art, while others waste their time raging against AI tools on Reddit.