> Now I dont think most people would say the second example violates any laws and is fair use. You cannot copyright a style (although some lawsuits are moving forward for rap flow) to my knowledge.

I still don't believe the examples are equivalent, despite some seeming similarities on the surface.

I agree that most people would say the second example is fair use, because the current definition of fair use was established before the existence of generative AI, and with natural limits built in and imposed by human capability.

What is currently deemed acceptable was deemed acceptable because of the friction involved in learning, and when examining what is "fair" about how one uses a piece of art, that evaluation did not at any point include a datacenter-sized AI slurping up every image indiscriminately and then enabling everyone, regardless of education or talent, to generate new works with minimal effort and with almost no time investment required.

If we achieved AGI tomorrow, and the AGI was capable of learning the way humans learn, and drawing inspiration the way humans draw inspiration, but could do so with superhuman efficiency, I think the same quandry exists. It's not about how closely the AI mimics human processes, but the fact that such an AI just fundamentally changes the game. It seems unlikely that the rules of fair use would look the way they do today, or that artists would be willing to allow their work to be ingested by such an AI, if they were given the opportunity to make that choice with a full understanding of the implications.

Agreeing to allow a human to look at my work and allowing a machine intelligence to "look" at it are just fundamentally different things, with drastically different implications. Comparing something to current norms of fair use falls down because the meaning of fair has almost certainly changed.

I struggle with the spreadsheet analogy, because this falls into a category of automating error-prone (when performed by humans) tasks guided by objective rules that look something like the laws of nature.

Art is inherently subjective, and with without human inspiration, the AI would not exist. Or at best, it would only be capable of producing outputs as mediocre as its inputs.