It’s not a popular opinion but you’re entirely right.

AI isn’t copying in the way that most people think it is. It truly is transformative in all the tradition copyright ways.

Is it copyright infringements if my company pays an employee to study the internet and that makes them capable of animating a frame from the Simpsons? No, it’s copyright infringement when that company publishes that copyright infringing work.

The reality is that copyright has always been a nonsense system and ‘fair use’ concepts were also nonsense and arbitrary. AI algorithms just let us expose how nonsense they are at scale.