False dichotomy. You call what AI does “stealing” but I don’t, I see it as the same process we all use when we learn an art, skill or a craft. We spend years looking at examples of other people’s work and (in your terms) “stealing” something from them. And no, I don’t think that’s wrong. Stealing is where you take something and the other person doesn’t have it anymore. Stealing is wrong, but mislabeling something as stealing doesn’t make it stealing.