This argument is being made for every single skill that AI assimilates from humans. Of course neural nets are doing "exactly" the same - their whole end goal is to simulate what humans seem to do.

But the reason we ask ourselves if AI genereted X in masse is legal or not is not about how things work, but what their impact is to living human beings. Laws are about protecting humans.

What's need to be protected is the fair access to "AI"s assisting the creative process. Because it seems you need access to huge amount of data and big big hardware, which won't be available to all the composers, or only the richest and most powerful.

I guess what will decide in the end is if people get more music they like than before assistive "AI"s. Actually, we don't know if composers + "AI"s can produce an additional significant amount of music people like.

A laptop can play music and it doesnt mean it’s a human. Same with ai. It may have a massive token database to mix in but it doesnt mean it’s a composer. Let alone it doesn’t mean it learns. It is software nothing more.