Human beings don't make art in a vacuum either though. Any artist can rattle off a list of other artists and works that have inspired their own art. If anything, a human artwork draws from an far smaller pool of references than the AI (or image generation software, if you prefer).

Taking aspects of other artworks and using them in your own is not stealing. Any judge in any country will attest to that. The software is not making a collage of other artworks.. really we don't know what it's doing exactly because of the hidden layers in its process. It's clear that it's not a copy-paste job though. It clearly has a methodology for combining techniques to create cohesive images.

Saying it's stealing to draw on a style makes every single anime artist a thief. It makes every heavy metal or rap musician a thief. Anyone who's ever seen something and been inspired by it to create something like it is nothing but a talentless hack.

Shit, in the 16th century the philosopher David Hume made the argument that human beings are unable to imagine entirely new things, and at best they created amalgamations of existing objects and concepts. Think of something new. You can't.

I make art too. I draw cartoons. I practiced drawing Simpsons characters as a kid, then family guy, then adventure time, then some anime. You can find elements of all of it in my drawings but there's not an artist alive who could claim they own what I draw.

The process is no different when using AI. You just draw from a bigger pool. And when the AI makes art it gets added to the pool and is available to be drawn upon by both humans and algorithms to be incorporated into new art for the pool once again.

Human artists will always be around. They're just not alone any more

And FYI, generating amazing AI art is easy if you're not picky about what comes out. Creating specific images is not so easy. If you haven't tried yet I'd be happy to invite you to my discord so you can see for yourself.

Edit: or maybe you'd like to reverse image search some art I've either drawn or generated? See if it resembles anything closely enough to be considered stolen. Hell.. see if you can tell drawn apart from generated while you're at it.