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>Ideas have never been the scope of copyright

This isn't about ideas, it's about a specific individuals work given that the reproduced text lifts literal characters out of Martin's book. That has always been covered by IP law. Canonical example, you cannot write a novel about Harry Potter, you can write a book about a wizard going to a magical school.

If a model generates large amounts of text that is very close to something you've written, because there isn't much else like it, how is that "inspired"? It needs more dilution.

We would have to change the law to allow the kind of ‘inspiration’ you are talking about, which is why there are multiple lawsuits here. That’s what OpenAI is asking for - redefinition of ‘fair use’. NNs aren’t copying ideas, they train on what copyright calls ‘fixation’ - they deal with text, audio, and pixels, not ideas. We keep hoping and looking for understanding in the NNs, but we have ample evidence that they don’t actually understand much, if anything, they are just really good at copying in a way that make understanding seem plausible to the layperson.