Copyright is not about protecting people. The purpose of copyright is:

>To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

The purpose of copyright is not to protect the authors, it is to promote the progress of science and art.

The current situation for AI image generation is pretty much the only way these technologies will be available to everyone. Most other paths will simply lead to billion dollar corporations acting as gatekeepers to this technology. Megacorps can afford to hire artists to generate specific art for their AI models, everyone else cannot.