If AI art only used ethically-sourced data, there’d be a lot less objection to it.

I can say, for sure, that this isn’t true.

People still catch the exact same flak for using generative fill in Photoshop despite Adobe training their models on artwork with the explicit permissions (and compensation) of the artists involved in making the training data.

People treat every model like it has personally eaten ever drawing and macaroni painting that they’ve ever done.