I'm absolutely on the side of the artists here, but I do wonder if the AI company's defense will be that the software is no different than another artists drawing inspiration from earlier works. Every art student studies the masters and has assignments to produce works in their style, and current artists have absolutely been influenced by contemporaries. No one evolves their creative style in a vacuum: that's impossible, short of living on a deserted island.

But this is a fundamentally different problem since the AI can produce millions of tailored works quickly, replacing vast numbers of creatives, threatening their livelihood. That's not as much of a concern with one-off artists creating things similar to something they saw earlier (although the individual concept may be the same).

This is going to be a really interesting legal case.