Any copyright currently is about the not-for-free right to _copy_, imitate-right on the other end, still has to be invented. I don't see how that would work in practice.

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It always boils down to the same question when discussing a.i. Is there a difference between people's imagination (producing art that is considered new, but is unmistakably influenced by existing pieces of art) and copying/transforming and stitching together pieces of existing art? In a few years from now, probably nobody can tell the difference anymore. Same question holds for the reasoning and intelligence capabilities of a.i. Soon we can't tell the difference in at least several knowledge/skill domains. Is there any difference, will become a hypothetical question.

Even if there was no difference at all in the process of image generation between AI and humans I would argue humans and AI should not be held to the same standard of law (and we're not even talking about true AI).

A human that copies someone will die. An AI can live, multiply, and be improved forever. Humans will never compete against anything they wind up being capable of. Society is built for humans not AI.

Not the capabilities, the results.

One one hand I support authors' rights to place restrictions on their art for a limited time. (Not the current forever + 75 years.) So let them draw whatever lines they want in the sand.

Because otherwise there's no general good way to delineate generative AI from other tools. It's a very fast magic brush. (You might have seen timelapse videos of artists do a digital painting. It's already pretty magical. Especially to me, because I can't even draw to eggs to match.)