I don’t disagree that its a misstep, but it feels like one that is not going to be corrected. It is going to be treated as the normal thing to do with training AI.

I would hazard that there wouldn’t be nearly as many artists complaining about AI if it hadn’t been trained on immorally obtained inputs. The fact that it can effortlessly recreate the style of an artist that was added to the data without their consent is, I think, what gives most artists the visceral reaction that they have. “Not only is it doing what we can do (to some degree), it is doing so because our work was used without our consent”.

AI is a valuable tool for art if used correctly, I don’t know if I agree that it is a disability aid. I can perhaps concede that someone who is entirely without fine motor ability can now make colours and shapes that vaguely resemble what they had in mind where perhaps they couldn’t before, but its difficult for me to consider that case “creating”. It is creating in the same sense as describing to your friend what you want and them trying to draw what you describe. There’s an output that resembles your input description, which might be enough for some?