e: the argument for human artists is human inspirations are generalized and artists’ own interpretations are always added to it, and for ML it’s that their network weights are highly generalized and likewise not a copy; but IMO a more solid line has to be drawn and distinction has to be made between C-c C-v and generalization at some point forward.

Human artists use copy/paste as a tool all the time, and it doesn't kill their careers. The element you're missing here is that jychang wasn't talking about copying pieces verbatim from others' work without permission & attribution, but rather using it as a tool to manipulate your own art ("to copy/paste a layer"). Imagine being able to do the same but with an AI model working behind the scenes to adjust the object to fit the scene it's being pasted into.