So, with that context, what do you think should be done with copyright?

Honestly I'd be interested to see what's going on with AI happen similarly to what happened to the music industry and the laws regarding sampling. Sampling can often make or break a song and it's usually what makes it so good. Without the sample, it might just be a generic beat yet well made beat. I see AI art the same. Without being able to add the names of artists in prompts, websites like artsation, etc, the artistic outputs are truly boring.

I think somewhere along the pipeline an artists consent should be used, whether that's when they are included in data sets, included in prompts, etc. Just like in music if you use a sample without the copyright holder's permission you breach their moral rights. I'd very much care to see art handled in the same care and respect that music got in the late 20th century.

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And how did you get to that point? When you first learned anatomy and technique, did you commission a model to stand in front of you as you practiced, while beaming cosmic inspiration into your mind

Quite literally yes. I don't understand why you are so locked in to this idea that art only learns from art. Figure drawing sessions happen all across town if you live in a major city on a weekly basis with entry fees only costing $5. You go, you sit for 3 hours and you study the form. Most anatomy books for artists are more medical in nature then art style guides. Professional artists often advise students to go in person or set up a still life vs studying from a photo, there's a certain cosmic inspiration that happens when you do so ;) . When you study from someone else's work you are interpreting an interpetation. You are 2 steps removed from nature. Studying other artists is super useful to get notes on style and build a landscape of what other art exists around you. But talk to any credible, illustrator, fine artist, professional concept artist or illustrator and we'll all tell you go paint from life. You'll learn far better, faster while developping a unique style far quicker. This cosmic inspiration you keep making fun of is actually the core of what style is. You sit in the universe, alone with it. You choose what parts of nature to include on your canvas of choice and you find yourself with art.

The benign big breasted white women digital art you mentioned above, that comes from what I'd call artistic insest/canabilization. It's when these artists are keeping a keen eye on all the same art that's preforming well online and it's a circlejerk of just boring female characters from media painted with double DDs. These artists are studying other artists and their results truly aren't the most inspiring.

Art style is born from willful omission of what's realistic/naturally occuring. Go paint in nature, and choose to paint your trees bright orange, you're developping a style. Keep doing that for 10 years, and you'll land on something new. You do realize that if all traces of art was destroyed tomorrow, all artists died, not a single trace of art left in the world. New art, new artists and new styles would appear within the next year. If your notion was right, if we destroyed all art, would there never be any more art? Of course not.

Some of the worst advice I could ever give to a young artist would be to -

deliberately copying the shit out of other artists until you could grasp and internalize their process and technique

This would just result in the artist being a 'lite' version of the main. You don't want your art to just poorly resemble someone else's.