The truth comes in as a quick afterthought, "and of course to finance our research on art and ML".
The whole discussion is meant to elicit "a pass". Dishonest.
If Obvious hadn't been successful with their goals, Robbie would not (and did not) care a bit that his work was being used. It only became contentious when they were able to raise a lot of money. It's funny.
Well, obviously. Robbie said in his Github readme: "When using any outputs of the models, credit me. Don't sell the outputs of the pre-trained models, modified or not. If you have any questions email me before doing anything."
I feel for the guy, but keep in mind: just putting some text in your readme does not create a legally binding contract.