@davidrevoy @Tanath very well put!

phrasing like ‘inspired’ anthropomorphise a heuristic that does a complex version of rote reproduction. it creates nothing new, its output is based wholly and entirely on reproduction of pre-existing imagery. overfitting examples to expose how the sausage gets made show this beyond a shadow of a doubt. experts on ‘AI’ agree with this.

and when the creators and owners of the material that is being reproduced did not license their material for that use, it can indeed be called ‘stealing.’