The reason the lawsuit feels weird is that transformative use is pretty clearly fair use:
> In computer- and Internet-related works, the transformative characteristic of the later work is often that it provides the public with a benefit not previously available to it,
I mean if genAI isn't this I'm not sure what would be. The public gets a benefit of having a computer generate art from spoken speech and that requires quite a substantial transformation of a data corpus of labelled images.
Indeed, there's lots of art at Art Basel that depicts Disney characters in various ways to critique Disney & that's a much more direct copying of a different artists style (& even more direct trademark infringement). It really feels like artists are trying to have it both ways because this threatens their livelihood.
