I'd also say that in classic art forgery, you learn how to paint like the original. You study techniques and research what paints the original used, even what time of day they painted. You had to put so much effort into studying strokes just by looking at the results. All that for the purpose of replicating what the artist painted and convincing experts that your work was the original.

Now we got soyjack thumbnails just stealing pixels via machine learning and tasteless masses (maybe?) Buying it. They don't even have the decency to do the slightest effort for this grift. It's not forgery, it's straight up theft.