> But proper original thought is still firmly in the realm of humans

Copying isn't just how design works, it's how everything works. Humans are imitation machines.

We create new things by collecting, regurgitating and mutating stuff we experience, just like LLMs. In a vacuum man has no ideas outside of base impulses.

Hence why originality is a novice belief. The closer you get to any field, the more you realize the stories around who made all the breakthroughs are BS media narratives. Most if not all steps forward in any field have hundreds of people clawing at similar ideas concurrently.