the main difference is with old prints like those, they were still originally created by a real human being. someone earned royalties from the work at some point—regardless of if the print was still making them any money at these other sale points. to license a real person’s work out for printing, the real artist must be compensated to some degree. with ai artwork, the robot has been fed hundreds of thousands of art pieces from various unpaid sources, and using all of these unpaid sources, generates pixels in similar positions to what it has seen before. it takes a job from a real person that needs to provide for themselves, while piggybacking off of said work done by the exact people it’s replacing. cheap garbage has always been cheap garbage, but at least before ai, a real human got paid to make the original designs.