The Supreme Court of the US is currently deciding if Andy Warhol's orange prince[1] violates copyright.
It is essentially a cropped photo, defeatured, plus the color orange.
This could be done easily without the help of AI at all, just cropping and filtering.
The case is very interesting and grapples with the same questions.I highly recommended listening to the oral arguments.[2]
I doubt the Andy Warhol Foundation will prevail, but it raises all these same questions, without the AI: What constitutes a transformative use of prior work?
Can you imbue existing art with new ideas and make it your own?