Your moral standard is great for you. I respect and applaud any moral ideals you hold for yourself, and your art. But this is like religion. And, like religion, your morality and values do not extend to me. You have no right to expect me, or anyone else to agree with and abide by your ethical standards. Especially when you just totally made them up last year.
That would be unreasonable.
So I'm sorry, respectfully, I have to reject your manifesto on ethics.
As far as the technicals, though...
You're confused because L-5 is a copy. That's a traditional copy, and nobody's even arguing that. You're absolutely right.
However, what I'm saying, is that the flattened data is decidedly not a copy, and couldn't be. A copy of five billion images, containing the whole of human artistic history, that could faithfully recreate anything... would be impossible... with even the best of today's technology.
Not only that, but nobody wants something that just outputs what's been put into it. That would be boring.
Thankfully though, not what we have, and it's not how the system works. Generative AI's are stereotype machines, not xeroxes. And that's a good thing, actually!
You knew all that though. You're not stupid, or uninformed, and I refuse to think of you as anything other than an equal.
I sincerely appreciate the time you've taken to discuss this with me.
Dada is life