Grrr! I keep trying to tell folk that these apps are not AIs but VIs (Virtual Intelligences). They are not self-aware and cannot come up with their own ideas!. They react flexibly to requests within the limits of their algorithms, which gives the appearance of 'intelligence' , that's all!
If an AI app were to turn round to a user and say "You can write that for yourself, you lazy git!" or "I'm not remotely interested in that topic." or, most importantly. "Sorry, I''m having a bad day today!" Then you'd be dealing with a true AI!
That would be the point where the moral/legal arguments would kick in!
At the moment, it's a question of people being greedy, mostly. Any human creative, writing or painting or whatever, begins with memories. We've all read things and seen things, and elements of those remain with us. We recombine those elements in accordance with what we want to say. But if we write a story about robots, it does not give everyone who ever wrote a robot story the right to jump all over us for plagiarising their work, unless they can prove we lifted entire characters, plots, paragraphs etc directly from their published or registered work. By the same token, if we issue a set of instructions to a VI, and it produces an image or a piece of written work based on those instructions and that image contains something recognisably lifted from owned and copyrighted work, then that is probably a violation. That's why when I use Dall-E I try to keep my images and instructions simple and generic.
But, if we're talking about a true AI, then it is arguable we are talking about a person! Made up of code, without a body, but self-aware, with imagination and emotions. And if this is a person, that person is entitllled to the same rights as the rest of us! Including those of protecting its own intellectual property, being protected from abuse, and personal freedom! To create such a person, then force them to do what you want without any kind of contract or reward, is basically slavery and I would fight against that as long as I had breath in my body!
