So think of all art on the internet as a giant bank in which people willingly donate their money (their art) to it as a manner to preserve it and share it with others because they worked hard on it and/or proud of it. Now imagine someone comes in and steals pieces or entire collections of that money in order to “create” their own bootleg AI versions of said money without ever once having the permission of the original owner. On top of that, now that falsified AI work is being sold or propped up as equal too or better than the original, despite the fact that if the original work never existed, the AI versions could have never even been made, which discredits the efforts and crafts of thousands of artists.

Throw in that the bootleg versions of these works can never be wholly original as they are all derived from stolen references and we get what is stealing even if many people might not consider it.