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At least in America, copyright laws are (ostensibly) primarily for the purpose of promoting and incentivizing the creation of original works. Copying someone else's work is bad not because it increases the availability of that work (which is a good thing) but because it decreases the rightful monetary gain of the original creator since people buying or pirating the copied work are not paying them when they ought to. As a result, fewer artists are financially incentivized to make things, and thus fewer original works are created (which is bad).
As such, there is no legitimate interest in banning AI art or its access to training data, provided the AI is creating new original works and not blatant ripoffs. Yes, the AI art may compete with human artists and thus indirectly reduce financial incentives for them to make art, but it does this indirectly by creating new original art that competes with theirs in the marketplace, same as any human artists who competes with them. As a result, more original art is created, and thus the copyright laws as intended should allow it to exist.
You make a good "spherical cows" argument which shows how we would want things to play out. I think there's a big gap between that toy model and real courts, though. Copyright laws might ostensibly primarily be for the purpose of promoting and incentivizing the creation of original works, but I think they're actually primarily for the purpose of appeasing entities who financially benefit off of being able to own intellectual property. Now, there are many such entities on both sides of this culture war, so I think which side wins in the courts will come down largely to who can grease more of the right palms than the opposition rather than any principles.
Although I agree that there is some ideological corruption in the courts, especially where the culture war is involved, they are less than 100% corrupt. Certainly less than the legislators. Which means that the actual intent of the law sends a nontrivial signal, and if there is money and advocates on both sides of the issue the actual intent can serve as a tiebreaker even if the other side has slightly more money.
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